There’s been a surge in citizen-led initiatives on D.C.’s ballots. Are they going too far?

A two-year freeze on all rents. A ban on selling foie gras. Moving D.C. to abandon Daylight Saving Time. A $25 minimum wage – and getting rid of D.C.’s tipped wage. 

That may seem like a random wish-list of promises made by someone running for office, but they’re actually questions that D.C. voters may have to answer during next year’s elections. Each issue has been proposed as a ballot initiative, D.C.’s system that allows regular residents and groups to offer up ideas and policies that then get voted on by residents. 

For supporters, ballot initiatives are direct democracy for a city with limited control over its own affairs — and where lobbyists often enjoy more access to Wilson Building decisionmakers than average residents. But for critics, these initiatives turn complicated issues into binary up-or-down votes, locking D.C. into adopting sometimes controversial and complex policies without the benefit of the deliberative legislative process.

Those criticisms have only gotten louder in recent months, and even more so with the introduction this week of the proposed initiative that would increase D.C.’s minimum wage to $25 by 2029 and eliminate the tipped wage by 2031. Sound familiar? It should – similar initiatives phasing out the tipped wage were approved in 2018 and 2022, but were subsequently repealed or watered down by the D.C. Council. 

Now, a bill before the council would apply the brakes on initiatives, giving opponents more opportunities to derail them before they get on the ballot, restricting initiatives to a single question at a time, and imposing new limits on how often the same issue can be put to voters. 

“D.C.’s direct democracy is hanging by a thread,” says Adam Eidinger, a local activist who has been involved in many of the initiatives that have been put to D.C.’s voters over the last decade.

A brief primer on ballot initiatives

Currently 24 states and D.C. allow some variation of the citizen ballot initiative, where voters can collect signatures on petitions to either propose that legislators take action on a specific issue or vote directly on it themselves. (D.C. also allows residents to call a referendum on any legislation passed by the council.)

Now, it’s not a particularly easy process in D.C. First, not just anything can be put on the ballot. Proposed initiatives can’t violate the U.S. Constitution or the city’s human rights laws (among the reasons why multiple attempts to criminalize homosexuality and gay marriage over the years never came to pass). They also can’t undo any of the council’s budget actions or directly appropriate funds. Second, proponents have to collect signatures from 5% of D.C.’s voters to get anything on the ballot (that’s currently more than 25,000 valid signatures) – and they have to hit a 5% threshold in at least five of the city’s eight wards. (That signature-collection has to happen within a six-month window, too.)

In the 46 years that D.C. residents have had the power to put initiatives on the ballot, there have been more than 80 attempts. Of those, some two-dozen have actually gotten to voters, and all but six were approved. And some of those have been particularly consequential — D.C.’s current law that guarantees shelter to people experiencing homelessness, for one, came from a ballot initiative that was approved by voters in 1984.

Mo initiatives, mo problems?

There’s been a noticeable increase in ballot initiatives over the past 12 years, with voters weighing in on everything from the tipped minimum wage (twice), legal marijuana possession, magic mushrooms, and ranked-choice voting and open primaries. (All of those were approved.) In fact, since 2014 almost every election cycle has included an initiative on the ballot – and 2026 could end up being especially crowded.

That increase in ballot initiatives – and the issues they are addressing – is prompting pushback from some quarters. 

During a recent council hearing, representatives from the city’s restaurant industry complained of “initiative abuse” and “outside groups pursuing national agendas” in reference to the repeated attempts to address the tipped wage. And leaders from the real estate sector similarly complained of the proposed initiative that would freeze rents in D.C. for two years, set new standards defining what housing is actually affordable, and impose new requirements on how the city spends public dollars to build affordable housing.

“Democracy only works when everyone gives up a little bit,” said Che Ruddell-Tabisola, the vice-president for government affairs for the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington. “The initiative process really precludes that.”

Both groups are supporting a bill written by At-Large Councilmember Anita Bonds that would limit ballot initiatives to one question at a time, which arose in response to Initiative 83, which sought to bring ranked-choice voting and open primaries to D.C. and was backed by a super majority of voters last year. It would also do away with the same issue being put to voters over and over again, requiring that six years pass before a repeat.

Bonds’ bill would also extend the existing timelines for finalizing the language of ballot initiatives and referenda, giving opponents more chances to intervene, and require that the estimated cost of a proposed initiative be presented to voters.

An ‘erosion of democracy’?

Opponents of the bill say it’s cover for a broader push to do away with ballot initiatives and referenda altogether, mirroring similar efforts in places like Ohio and Florida. Earlier this fall legislators in Missouri passed a bill that critics say would unrealistically raise the threshold for a ballot initiative to become law; much the same is likely in Utah under legislation that will be decided by voters next year. 

“They are trying to silence voters from bringing up important issues that are not getting attention from them because their financial backers don’t want attention on wages and on housing,” says Eidinger, who has developed a particular expertise (and funding stream) for ballot initiatives in D.C. “They are acting like agents of the corporate aristocracy that doesn’t like democracy.”

Eidinger also argues that the ballot initiative isn’t the be all, end all; even if one is passed by voters, the council can always tweak or repeal it. And that has happened on multiple occasions over the years. When D.C. voters approved term limits for the city’s elected officials back in 1994, the council simply repealed the initiative. It did the same in 2018 when it overturned Initiative 77, the first ballot measure that phased out the tipped wage, and partially followed suit this summer when it watered down the follow-up attempt, Initiative 82.

“It’s a solution in search of a problem,” says Lisa Rice, the proposer of Initiative 83, which will bring ranked-choice voting to D.C. next year, of Bonds’ bill. Trupti Patel, the proponent of the new ballot initiative that would raise the city’s minimum wage to $25 (it’s currently $17.95) and do away with the tipped wage calls Bonds’ proposal an “erosion of democracy.”

Eidinger and Rice add that D.C.’s existing requirements already make it hard enough to get an initiative on the ballot; over the decades that initiatives have existed in the city, many have failed to collect the required signatures from voters.

But even some former supporters of the ballot initiative process have grown wary of it being used to navigate complex issues like worker wages and housing costs.  

“I’m the biggest champion of workers and affordable housing and I disagree with these ballot initiatives,” says former At-Large Councilmember Elissa Silverman, who herself was involved in backing an initiative in 2012 that would have banned corporate contributions to candidates for office. (The initiative never made the ballot.) “This is an end-run around representative democracy. It is bypassing the council. There can be a lot of valid complaints that this council isn’t focused on affordability … but there needs to be an examination of tradeoffs and unintended consequences.”

Proponents of the current ballot initiative system say it’s insulting to assume D.C. residents don’t understand what they are voting on. And they point out that in the past they have rejected ballot initiatives, including one that would have banned horse-drawn carriages in the city and another that would have imposed a small refundable fee for plastic and glass bottles sold at stores. 

Still, Silverman says she’d like to see D.C.’s ballot initiative process become less direct. Residents could still draw up petitions around specific issues, but those would go to the council instead of on the ballot. If the council failed to act, it would then go directly to voters. That’s the same system used in Massachusetts and Maine; Washington state allows both initiatives that go directly to voters and those that are directed to legislators.

“It would be saying, ‘OK, we the voters are concerned and want you to address this issue.’ And if they don’t, then it goes to the voters,” she says. “I think that’s the right way to do it.”