In 24 states across the country, voters can propose policies through citizen initiatives. But this year, legislators in several states are asking voters to give up some of that power or to approve changes that would make initiatives harder to pass. Among their complaints about initiatives: They cost too much.

Next Tuesday, voters in a range of states will consider ballot referenda that attempt to tap the brakes on these initiatives. In North and South Dakota, voters will be asked whether constitutional amendments need to receive a supermajority of 60 percent of the vote to pass. Utahns will consider a 60 percent threshold for citizen initiatives that raise or expand taxes. Idaho voters are being asked whether to put drug-related policies under the sole purview of the legislature, foreclosing the possibility of any citizen initiative that reforms drug laws. Missouri voters in August rejected by an 80-20 margin a Republican proposal that would have required initiatives to win majorities in every congressional district, an impossible burden. Even in Democratic jurisdictions like Washington, D.C., legislators are seeking to limit initiatives.

Cost is at the center of the argument for most of those who seek to limit initiatives. Missouri GOP Governor Mike Kehoe warned that his state’s constitution “shouldn’t be the victim of out-of-state special interests who spend millions to deceive voters.” In Florida, where not a single initiative qualified for the ballot this year (compared to an average of about two in each cycle), Republican state Representative Jenna Persons-Mulicka said that the process has been “taken over” by fraudsters and moneyed interests. Arkansas’s Republican Senate President Pro Tempore Bart Hester said new restrictions were necessary to protect “the average voter in Arkansas” from out-of-state billionaires.

But maybe ballot initiatives aren’t really that expensive, compared to the good they can achieve by letting citizens speak for themselves. The campaigns that tend to make national news because of their astronomical costs, like California’s 2022 proposition to legalize sports betting, are exceptions. A recent New America report by Maresa Strano (one of this article’s authors) and Oscar Pocasangre examining the finances of ballot initiative campaigns from 2014 to 2024 provides a more nuanced picture. The report found that of the 20 top-spending initiative campaigns during that period, all but two were in California or Florida—the most populous states with an initiative process. Among 288 initiatives analyzed, 72 percent spent less than $10 million in support, and nearly a quarter spent less than $1 million. Compared to the money that goes into competitive congressional or statewide candidate campaigns, these ballot-measure campaigns seem almost cheap.

Warnings about “out-of-state” money also deserve a closer look. DePaul University professor Madison Schroder’s research on contributions to direct democracy campaigns from 2006 to 2022 found that out-of-state giving has indeed grown, but that the vast majority of initiative campaign contributions originate in-state. She also concludes that out-of-state donors in this context are often mischaracterized as the super-rich. Although large donations account for a larger share of total out-of-state dollars, more than 86 percent of out-of-state donors gave $100 or less.

Those are two different phenomena that too often get lumped together. “Out of state” does not necessarily mean “special interest.” A small donation from someone in North Carolina to express support for a pro-choice measure in Ohio is not the same as a million-dollar check from Reproductive Freedom for All or Club for Growth, but it is scorned by politicians just the same. Schroder also found that many of these small donors come from lower-income ZIP codes, and many live in states without an initiative process of their own. While the role of wealthy interests in initiatives is a legitimate concern, treating every dollar that crosses state lines as evidence of shady interests is not particularly helpful.

For people who want to see the ballot initiative fulfill its Progressive Era purpose as a corrective to an unresponsive legislature, the most concerning trend observed in the New America report was the dramatic rise in the costs of getting on the ballot in the first place. Those costs are often controlled by the same legislators who are trying to limit initiatives.

Median signature-gathering costs increased from about $315,000 in 2012 to $5.8 million in 2024. These are the start-up costs campaigns incur before voters even have a proposal to consider. A campaign without millions for TV or digital advertising can find other ways to reach voters, or, as is often the case with measures such as minimum-wage increases, it can sail to victory on the basis of the issue’s inherent popularity. But one that cannot afford to qualify for the ballot in the first place is finished before the campaign begins.

Many states have added new geographic distribution requirements, requiring a certain number of signatures from each congressional district or county. These significantly increase the costs of qualifying for the ballot. So does increasing the number of signatures required. Each percentage-point increase in the share of voters whose signatures are needed to qualify for the ballot was associated with another 66 cents per required signature. Initiated constitutional amendments cost, on average, $3.76 more per required signature than initiated statutes. And restrictions on who can collect signatures and during what time frames can also run up the tab.

Arkansas illustrates some of these issues. Lawmakers there restricted paid circulators in 2021 and increased the number of counties in which campaigns must collect signatures from 15 to 50 (there are 75). In 2024, Arkansas, not California, had the highest cost per required signature in our dataset. Florida’s signature costs have soared under new petition rules to such an extreme that, as noted above, not a single measure qualified this year.

These restrictions, imposed in the name of limiting big money or out-of-state money, actually make money more important in the process. A well-funded organization or corporation can meet a more demanding process by cutting a bigger check. A local group relying on volunteer signature gatherers or running on a shoestring budget has fewer options. In Florida, a campaign to expand Medicaid abandoned its effort to reach the 2026 ballot after lawmakers passed a raft of new regulations on the petition process, along with steep financial and criminal penalties for individual violators that will chill participation by all but the most sophisticated actors. This summer, a federal judge in Arkansas found that restrictions on who could collect signatures made campaigns less efficient and more expensive, while volunteer-led efforts failed to qualify.

To be sure, initiative states should not merely shrug at the money problem. Campaigns should have to show public support, and voters should know who is financing them. But the current debate has focused too much on making initiatives harder to use—and as a result more expensive—and not enough on making them accessible to all.