© 2025 Milwaukee Public Media is a service of UW-Milwaukee's College of Letters & Science
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Why citizens can’t petition statewide ballot initiatives and referendums in Wisconsin

The public can follow along with all the seasons of the Wisconsin State Legislature, as it takes up laws that impact them.
Maayan Silver
/
WUWM
Wisconsin's state Capitol building in Madison.

Earlier this month, Gov. Tony Evers announced he’d try again to allow citizen-led referendums in Wisconsin by including the change in his upcoming two-year budget proposal.

This process would allow voters to enact statewide policies, directly, without the Wisconsin Legislature’s approval.

To help explain what a citizen-led referendum is and how it works in other states, Lake Effect’s Xcaret Nuñez spoke with Derek Clinger, a senior staff attorney with the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School. He begins by talking about Gov. Evers’ proposal.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Derek Clinger: Unpacking his announcement a little more, he proposed adopting three forms of the citizen-led initiative and referendum power: one of these would create a petition process allowing the people to propose and approve amendments to the state constitution, basically allowing Wisconsinites to go around the Legislature. Another would create a petition process allowing the people to propose and approve state laws, again, allowing the people to go around the Legislature. The third would create a petition process that would allow the people to hold an election to approve or reject laws passed by the Legislature.

Other technical and procedural details would need to be worked out to create a functioning initiative and referendum process, but broadly speaking, the proposal would create these petition processes to give people a more direct policy-making role in the state.

How many other states have this citizen ballot initiative and referendum process already in place?

About half the states have at least one form of the initiative or referendum. And there's a real diversity within this group of states. It's not just limited to any particular region of the country, nor is this limited to red states, blue states or even purple states. It's kind of a mix.

Just from the past decade or so, people in other states have used the initiative process to adopt policies like increasing the minimum wage, expanding Medicaid, limiting gerrymandering, passing campaign finance reforms, and perhaps most prominently, protecting access to abortion.

If some form of the citizen-led initiative or referendum process is already present in half the country, why doesn't Wisconsin have a process like this already?

One thing that's important to note is Wisconsin actually has a process like this at the local level, in cities and villages. It’s called the direct legislation process. Citizens can use a petition process to propose ordinances and resolutions. So this concept isn't entirely foreign to Wisconsin, but why doesn't Wisconsin have this at the statewide level?

Well, the initiative and referendum process would require authorization in the state constitution. And I guess the short answer is, the [state] constitution has never authorized it. When the state was founded [in 1848], no state had adopted the citizen-led initiative and referendum power at the statewide level. So it really wasn't even up for discussion at that point, and it wasn't until the end of the 19th century, the early 20th century, that the statewide initiative and referendum caught on with states.

Now, interestingly, the question of whether to amend [Wisconsin’s] State Constitution to allow this process was actually put to the voters in 1914 and the voters rejected it, and pretty handily at that. So I suspect that defeat has slowed any momentum behind it. Now, in the 100 or so years since then, there have been several dozen proposals in the Legislature to amend the state constitution to allow the initiative and referendum, but none of them have been submitted for votes of the people since.

If this process were brought to a statewide level here in Wisconsin, what are some proposals Wisconsinites might want to put on a ballot? 

I think, if Wisconsinites had the initiative right now, we might see initiatives to increase the minimum wage, maybe to legalize medical marijuana, maybe even recreational marijuana, maybe enact gun safety measures, maybe guarantee abortion rights in the state constitution, or maybe reform the state's redistricting process.

Also, I don't want to forget about the veto referendum process either. That's the process that would allow voters to weigh in on laws passed by the Legislature. An example that jumps out to me is Act 10 from 2011. This is a law that effectively ended collective bargaining rights for public sector unions. I would think if Wisconsin had the veto referendum in place in 2011, when that law was first enacted, you very likely would have seen that law put up for a vote by the people. A similar thing happened in Ohio, a very similar law was passed, but in Ohio, the people have the veto referendum, and so they put that law up for a vote and rejected it.

We've established that there's no pathway for Wisconsinites to enact or reject a new state law or amend the state constitution. But Wisconsin voters did see five statewide referendum questions on their ballot last year. So how do those referendums get on a ballot? 

There are a few types of statewide referendums that Wisconsin voters currently can see on their ballots. This includes questions about whether to approve or reject amendments to the state constitution. Those are proposed by the Wisconsin Legislature, and as you mentioned, voters saw five of those [referendums] last year.

Another type of question voters can see is called an advisory question — these basically try to take the pulse of the state's voters on particular issues but don't have any legally binding effect. Voters most recently saw one of those in April 2023 when they were asked if childless adults should be required to look for work in order to receive welfare benefits.

There are a few other types of questions that are much more narrowly focused, but the bottom line is that right now, only the Wisconsin Legislature can put statewide referendums on the ballot.

Why do lawmakers go through this referendum process, as opposed to working it out through the Legislature?

There are a few reasons why lawmakers might do this. You're keeping in mind right now that Republicans control the Legislature and that the governor is a Democrat, and they might not necessarily agree on everything. The current referendum process allows legislators to get past the governor, who has the power to veto laws he disagrees with, but does not have the power to stop these referendums from going on the ballot. So, it's a way for the Legislature to try to get measures they support, but the governor does not, in place.

Another reason is the state's courts. Even if the law has been enacted, there is the possibility that the state's courts could declare the law unconstitutional, but amending the state constitution to allow for a certain policy takes away that possibility.

Just one other consideration is that these can have an impact on voter turnout. Having particular issues on the ballot might encourage people to turn out to vote who otherwise might have stayed home, but that could also be said of citizen-led initiatives, those can drive [voter] turnout as well.

You can learn more about how all 50 states put measures on the ballot through a resource published by the State Democracy Research Initiative

Xcaret is a WUWM producer for Lake Effect.
Related Content