Adopting the “initiative” and “referendum” in Iowa

During the “Progressive Period” in American history—two decades or so, from roughly 1896 until 1917—a number of states adopted the “initiative” and “referendum” as part of the way their governments operated. Many of those states were in the American West. Iowa was not among them. What would it be like here if we had taken that step—or if we did so now?

The initiative allows citizens to propose new legislation on the election ballot, and the referendum allows voters to vote those proposals up or down. That combination provides a way to bypass the state legislature which, as we know, doesn’t always enact legislation that is the people’s choice.

Iowa does have a referendum in specialized situations. One of those is that every judge of a district court and the state court of appeals, and every justice of the supreme court, has to stand for retention in office every few years. If a majority of voters say “no,” that judge or justice has to step down. (That process is like a “recall,” another result of the Progressive Period.)

Another example of the referendum in our state is when two successive Iowa general assemblies approve an amendment to the Iowa Constitution in exactly the same form. The proposed amendment is then placed on the election ballot, and the voters get to decide whether they favor or oppose the proposal. If the voters approve, then it becomes part of the state’s constitution. If they say no, then the proposal dies.

The Iowa legislature, with Republicans in the majority, in 2021 adopted a resolution for a state constitutional amendment that says “. . . this Constitution does not recognize, grant, or secure a right to an abortion.” The year 2021 was the first session of the two-year general assembly (legislature) of 2021-22. So in order for the proposed amendment to move forward, the next general assembly (2023-24) would have to approve it as well.

But the legislature did not put the measure to a second vote, either in 2023 or in 2024. That was because GOP legislative leaders wanted to wait to see what the Iowa Supreme Court would decide about lawsuit challenges to abortion that were working their way through the state’s judicial system. If they choose to proceed with the proposed amendment, they can still do so, since it’s still 2024. But they would have to call a special legislative session to do so.

They have not done so yet, and it’s a foregone conclusion they won’t do it by the end of this calendar year. There are at least two reasons for that.

One is that the current legal status of abortion in Iowa closely matches what the Republican leadership wants. After the legislature last year passed a law banning most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, a Polk County district court issued an injunction against the statute. The state appealed, and on June 28 of this year the Iowa supreme court by a vote of 4 to 3 dissolved the injunction and allowed the six-week ban to take effect. The ban became operative last Monday.

So while abortion is not totally illegal now in Iowa, most experts say that 99 percent of requests for the procedure will not be allowed under current law. And most Republican legislators seem satisfied with that outcome.

The second reason, probably more important, has to do with public opinion. A large majority of opinion polls for the past several years has found that most Iowans, by 60 percent or more, favor allowing abortions in all or most cases. The polls indicate that if Iowans were allowed to vote on the proposed amendment, it would likely go down to defeat.

Republican legislators don’t want to take that risk. While future Iowa supreme court justices could overturn the court’s June 28 decision, and once again leave most abortion decisions to the woman and her doctor, such an eventuality would probably not occur anytime soon. 

So the legislature has little to gain from asking Iowans what they think of the proposed constitutional amendment. In 2021, before the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, it seemed like a good idea to legislative Republicans. Now, not so much.

But if Iowa had the initiative and referendum, things could be entirely different. A popular movement could gather enough signatures to place on the ballot an opposite constitutional amendment, one that would guarantee the right to an abortion under the Iowa Constitution. That amendment, if polls are to be believed, would stand a good chance of passage, as it has in several other states.

Other constitutional amendments, or simple statutes, could be proposed that many Iowans might support: forbidding public dollars for religious schools; returning to the progressive income tax rather than the current flat tax; guaranteeing that income taxes can be raised or lowered by a simple majority of legislators; determining the limits of eminent domain. You get the idea.

Sure, all those possibilities can also be achieved by electing legislators and a governor who favor them. But Iowans appear disinclined to do that. So in the absence of the initiative and referendum, Iowans, unlike the citizens of some other states, are at the mercy of their legislature.

However, in every year ending in a zero, the Iowa Constitution requires the state’s citizens to vote whether to hold a constitutional convention to amend the basic document, or to replace it entirely. Adding the initiative and referendum to our constitution would require an amendment to do so. It’s intriguing to muse how Iowans would vote on that proposal if given the opportunity.