The number of measures on the ballot from year to year has varied drastically, as has the amount of money that s spent on initiative campaigns. Waters expects ballot measures to become less, not more, common in the years to come because of the increasingly stiff regulations they face under state legislatures. The high-water mark for ballot measures was 1996, says Waters. The number is coming down because the average citizen can t utilize the initiative process. If you take the 24 states that allow initiatives, only about 18 have what people consider to be a usable initiative process.
Many states regulate the process to the point that it becomes unusable.
Donovan says, We ve tried to look systematically in certain states to determine how well these wealthy proponents of ballot measures do in trying to advance their own interests, and we ve found that they pass at a much lower rate than ballot measures generally. The most important piece of information most voters needed to make a decision on a measure, according to Donovan, was its proponents. States are requiring an increasing number of signatures to put an initiative on the ballot and making the process more and more difficult. And so it s more expensive. There are a few exceptions to that.