With Labor Day behind us, the 2024 election season has officially begun.
Top of mind for most voters is the presidential contest between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Much like the former’s 2020 matchup against Joe Biden, this year’s election is expected to come down to tens of thousands of votes across a few key battleground states, making an already tight race even more tense.
While electing Harris and other Democrat candidates remains paramount for leftists, it’s not their only objective this election cycle. In fact, Democrats have found a way to potentially advance their agenda in the event of a Trump victory — even in states he’s all but guaranteed to win.
Across the country, left-wing groups funded by Democrats’ dark money machine have successfully placed initiatives on their states’ November ballots that seek to enshrine radical Democrat policies into state constitutions. If approved by voters, these deceptively worded amendments will turn swing states and reliable Republican strongholds into bastions of despotic leftism.
“[What] was initially meant to be a last check on government has, in fact, become a [tool] that the left is [weaponizing] to push its agenda,” Honest Elections Project Executive Director Jason Snead told The Federalist.
The Situation
According to Snead, the left’s hijacking of the ballot initiative process can be traced back to as early as 2018, when Democrat activists placed a measure overhauling Michigan’s election system on the state’s midterm ballot. The constitutional amendment sought to implement radical left-wing policies, such as automatic voter registration and no-excuse absentee voting.
The idea appeared to pick up further steam in 2022. In Michigan, leftists put forward ballot measures enshrining abortion and child mutilation and unsecure election practices into the state constitution. Much like the 2018 amendment, the initiatives were approved by voters.
It’s worth mentioning that both chambers of the Michigan Legislature were controlled by Republicans prior to 2023, meaning major legislative priorities backed by Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer required approval from GOP lawmakers. By weaponizing the ballot initiative process, Democrats were able to circumvent the state legislature and deceive voters into implementing their agenda into law.
“The left has been acutely aware of the fact that you can use ballot initiatives to sidestep legislatures [and] push policies that they present in the most favorable terms possible, and what they end up using these ballot measures for, of course, is to push a very partisan agenda,” Snead said. “Whether we’re talking about abortion or voting law changes, we kind of know what that agenda looks like.”
After successfully duping Ohio voters into embedding baby-killing into their state’s founding document last year, Democrats are now going all out on radical ballot measures this fall. In addition to abortion, left-wing groups are backing amendments mandating minimum wage hikes, legalizing marijuana use, implementing ranked-choice voting, and expanding the use of mail-in balloting, to name a few.
And it’s not just toss-up states like Nevada and Arizona that Democrats are targeting. Some of these left-wing initiatives will be considered by voters in “red” states, such as Florida, Idaho, Montana, and Missouri.
[RELATED: These Important Election Integrity Initiatives Might Be On Your 2024 Ballot]
Show Me the Money
The wave of deceptive Democrat ballot measures hasn’t gone without financial help from the party’s dark money network.
Speaking with The Federalist, Americans for Public Trust (APT) Executive Director Caitlin Sutherland highlighted the role of the Sixteen Thirty Fund in pouring money into the state and local groups behind the initiatives. According to InfluenceWatch, the group is a “left-of-center lobbying and advocacy organization” overseen by Arabella Advisors, a major financial backer of Democrat-aligned entities and priorities.
“The Sixteen Thirty fund spends tens of millions of dollars in these competitive ballot issues across the United States,” Sutherland said.
During the 2024 cycle, for example, the organization has collectively poured millions into pro-abortion initiatives in states such as Arizona and Florida. It’s also dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into Alaska to support a measure mandating a minimum wage increase and oppose an initiative repealing the state’s ranked-choice voting (RCV) system.
RCV is predominantly favored by Democrats as a way of flipping traditionally Republican-held seats and has produced inaccurate election results and high rates of discarded ballots. The system was used by Democrats to take control of Alaska’s at-large congressional district and by establishment GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski to win her 2022 reelection bid.
Other left-wing organizations, including Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Open Society Foundations, have contributed to Democrat-aligned ballot measures in recent years, according to Sutherland.
Foreign Cash
The Sixteen Thirty Fund isn’t solely reliant on American cash to enshrine leftist policies into state constitutions, however. As noted by Sutherland, the organization has received large swaths of money from wealthy foreign figures, such as Swiss national Hansjörg Wyss.
An APT report published earlier this year revealed that Wyss, through his Berger Action Fund, “has funneled $243 million into [the] Sixteen Thirty Fund.” APT identified “nearly $100 million … in funding for ballot issues by [the] Sixteen Thirty Fund across 25 states over the last 10 years.”
The Sixteen Thirty Fund’s financial impact was notable in efforts to pass the aforementioned pro-abortion constitutional amendment in Ohio. According to the Ohio Capital Journal, an affiliate of the left-wing media entity States Newsroom, the Democrat-aligned “Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights and the organization’s prior name Ohioans For Reproductive Freedom received about $6.4 million” from the Sixteen Thirty Fund throughout the 2023 cycle.
Wyss’s interference in the U.S. electoral process prompted Ohio Republicans to pass legislation earlier this year barring foreign money in state ballot measure campaigns. A review of Ohio’s campaign finance database shows the Sixteen Thirty Fund gave $6 million to the group behind a Democrat-backed redistricting amendment on the same day Gov. Mike DeWine announced a special legislative session to pass the prohibition.
While approved by DeWine in June, the law — which was set to take effect Sunday — was partly blocked by a federal district court judge on Saturday. Secretary of State Frank LaRose and Attorney General David Yost have since appealed the decision to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.
How to Save Red America
While Republicans in states such as Ohio and Missouri have (unsuccessfully) attempted to raise the threshold for amending their constitutions, the GOP has largely failed to develop a cohesive strategy on how to combat Democrats’ weaponization of the ballot petition process.
Sutherland said the structural differences between the left’s political machine and the right’s are contributing to Republican defeats and noted that the “left has a collectivist approach to weaponizing and funding these ballot issues that is not seen on the right.” The election integrity specialist further encouraged states to implement laws prohibiting foreign funding of ballot measures to help stave off leftists’ abuse of the ballot initiative process.
Snead voiced similar calls for states to close the foreign funding loophole and advocated for greater efforts to inform the public of the left’s tactics.
“The public generally does not like when out-of-state groups, much less ‘dark money groups,’ are [trying] to advance agendas in their states,” he said. “Educating the public on the abuses of this process and who is behind [it] can be instrumental in getting the public to a place where they understand that this process is being abused.”
He also suggested states could pass legislation like that proposed in Missouri to “make sure that signatures [for ballot initiatives] are being gathered from the entire state” rather than high-population Democrat enclaves to ensure the measure is something voters from different geographic areas want on the ballot.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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