Children at the Ballot Box: Why Direct Democracy May Be a Game-Changer for Kids
Child advocates have often ignored or minimized the use of ballot measures and direct democracy as part of our playbook. It's past time to change that.
In recent election cycles, including earlier this month, people in states and communities across the country cast votes to improve services to children, including in Colorado, Seattle, and Cincinnati.
These were not legislative acts debated in committee rooms. They were public votes and direct appeals to the people. And increasingly, they are becoming a key battleground for children’s futures.
This is both a moment of hope – and a warning.
Even as child advocates have successfully used initiative and referendum (I&R) processes to secure funding and policy wins for kids, an opposing movement has simultaneously used the same democratic tools to advance agendas that harm children.
In Texas, voters passed a “parental rights” constitutional amendment that could undermine public education and children’s rights to safety, health care, and inclusive schools. In Washington State, ballot measures have been proposed that threaten the health, education, and privacy of youth. These measures would threaten to strip children of protections, silence their voices, and restrict their access to supportive communities.
This tension – between ballot measures that uplift and those that undermine children – demands a strategic response. We cannot afford to treat direct democracy as a sideline strategy. If child advocates sit out these fights, we risk letting the loudest voices – and often the most well-funded – define the policy landscape for children.
But here’s the good news:
✔️ When children’s issues appear on the ballot, they often win.
✔️ Voters respond to investments in kids. They support school bonds, early childhood initiatives, and protections for children’s well-being.
The initiative process, born out of the Progressive Era as a way to give people a direct voice, still holds power today, especially for children who are often invisible in the legislative process because they do not vote, do not have Political Action Committees (PACs), and do not have paid lobbyists.
But when advocates speak for them through the initiative process, they can finally be heard.
I increasingly believe there is an urgent, strategic, and moral case for children’s advocates to embrace ballot measures not just as a possibility but as an increasingly central part of our policy playbook. The stakes are too high to leave this powerful tool on the table.
What is Initiative and Referendum, and Why It Matters for Kids
In most public policy conversations, power flows through elected officials. Legislatures pass laws, governors sign bills, and policymakers negotiate budgets (sometimes successfully and sometimes unsuccessfully, as the government shutdown highlighted). However, in 26 states and many cities and counties, there’s another way to make law: through direct democracy.
Initiative and referendum (I&R) processes allow voters themselves to propose and approve laws directly. These tools, developed during the Progressive Era in the early 1900s, were designed to give the public a way to bypass political gridlock, corporate influence, political polarization, or legislative inaction.
There are generally two kinds of I&R mechanisms:
Initiatives: Citizen-led proposals that become law if approved by voters.
Referenda: Voter approval or rejection of laws already passed by legislatures.
Local jurisdictions also use versions of I&R, particularly for school bonds, tax measures, and other public finance decisions that directly affect children.
Ballot measures offer something rare in policymaking: a clear, public yes-or-no on whether our communities are willing to invest in children. That clarity can be galvanizing for advocacy networks, for voters, and for the children whose lives hang in the balance. If done well, I&R mechanisms can center children in the debate and give the public a way to take action to support the needs and best interests of the next generation.
Why This Matters for Children’s Policy
A Direct Channel for Policy Change When Legislatures Stall
Children’s policy issues often suffer from invisibility. They are often treated as an afterthought in the political system. Lawmakers may support kids rhetorically, but in practice, children’s needs are sidelined by more immediate and more politically powerful corporate-focused concerns.
Initiatives can be used to break that cycle. They allow advocates to take urgent needs directly to the public, especially when statehouses are gridlocked, disinterested, actively hostile, or moving backward.
Across the country, a growing number of communities are using this process.
In 2024, the Children’s Funding Project successfully supported initiatives in five jurisdictions – across three counties and two cities – where advocates placed children’s funding measures on the ballot. These include sales tax increases, property tax measures, and other revenue tools explicitly designed to fund early learning, after-school care, and youth mental health services.
Voters Actually Support Children’s Investments
Contrary to the cynicism that dominates national politics, when voters are given the chance to support kids, they often say yes. Over the past decade, voters have approved hundreds of school bond measures, early childhood levies, and youth-services initiatives across the country.
To the public, children still have moral resonance and are viewed as strongly deserving of public support. Parents, grandparents, educators, and community members – across ideological lines – understand that investing in kids is investing in our collective future.
When framed clearly, these ballot initiatives help fund preschool, child care, social services, and after-school programs. Ballot initiatives can cut through the noise and partisan polarization. They pose a simple question: “Will we choose children?”
The Ballot as a Battleground: Defending Public Education
Even when children are put on the defensive, such as in recent attacks on public education, voters have repeatedly shown a willingness to protect schools and resist privatization. In state after state, measures to expand vouchers or divert public funds to private schools have struggled at the ballot box. Meanwhile, voters continue to approve school funding bonds, especially when the benefits for children are made visible and tangible.
For example, since 1970, there have been 22 statewide school choice ballot initiatives proposing private school vouchers, education savings accounts, or private funding mechanisms. Only two passed – both limited charter authorizations. The remaining 20 were soundly rejected.
Source: Ballotpedia News (2025, May 30). How ballot measures have shaped school choice policy 100 years after Pierce v. Society of Sisters.
This pattern reveals a deep public commitment to public education and a warning to those trying to undermine and dismantle public schools. Ballot measures have become a defensive shield against school defunding, ideological overreach, and billionaire donors who seek to privatize public schools. These initiatives have presented an opportunity to affirm the public good.
Raising Awareness, Even in Defeat
Even when a children-focused ballot measure fails, it still serves a crucial function: educating the public. Campaigns force conversations, build coalitions, mobilize communities, force candidates and public officials to take a stand, and put children’s needs into the media spotlight. They demand clarity from public officials and give communities a stake in decisions that shape childhood.
Ballot measures make children visible.
A Long History of Speaking for Children Through the Ballot
The initiative process has long been used to advance children’s interests, but only when advocates dare to use it.
In 1912, Colorado voters passed a citizen-led initiative to limit child labor – one of the earliest known uses of direct democracy for children’s rights. It was a rejection of industrial exploitation, driven by a Progressive Era movement that believed that voters would side with children over corporate interests.
Almost 100 years later, in 2008, children faced an enormous problem because the Montana legislature had repeatedly rejected efforts to improve children’s health coverage offered through the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Tens of thousands of children remained uninsured, and so Montana State Auditor John Morrison successfully drafted and brought a ballot initiative, Healthy Montana Kids (HMK), to the voters in 2008 to expand children’s health coverage in Montana.
Reflecting on the success of that initiative at its 10-year anniversary, Morrison wrote:
In 2008, Montanans were fed up, and I-155 was born. I-155 combined the CHIP program and children’s Medicaid behind a new homegrown storefront called Healthy Montana Kids. HMK increased CHIP eligibility to 250 percent of the federal poverty level and allowed Medicaid to enroll kids up to 185 percent. It eliminated the asset test for kids, simplified the application, and allowed hospitals and schools and other enrollment partners to sign kids up under streamlined presumptive eligibility guidelines. All of this was done without a tax increase, using existing premium tax and federal matching funds. In November 2008, Montanans passed I-155 by a vote of 70 percent to 30 percent. That is what we call a landslide.
With the ballot initiative, thousands of children gained access to health care. It proved to be a powerful example that when politics stalls and fails children, the people can still move forward.
Looking Abroad: Ireland’s Referendum Offers a Model for Centering Children’s Rights
Ireland offers another example of a democratic initiative that affirmed children’s rights and insisted that their best interests be a constitutional priority.
In 2012, Ireland held a national referendum to amend its Constitution and explicitly recognize children as rights-holders. Prior to the vote, Irish constitutional law largely framed children’s rights as a derivative of parental rights, a familiar structure in American jurisprudence. As in the United States, this limited view had contributed to institutional neglect and left children vulnerable in legal proceedings, particularly in cases of abuse, adoption, and state protection.
The amendment, which passed by a 58-to-42% margin, created a new constitutional provision affirming that the best interests of the child must be the paramount consideration in care, protection, and legal decisions. It also ensured that the child’s voice would be heard in relevant judicial proceedings.
This shift holds powerful lessons for U.S. child advocates. At a time when parental rights amendments, such as Texas’s recently passed Proposition 15, threaten to subordinate children’s interests to unchecked parental authority, Ireland’s referendum shows that democracy can work to ensure that children’s fundamental rights and best interests are not ignored. It can affirm children’s dignity and reframe law and policy around what is best for them – not just what is preferred by adults.
While the U.S. lacks a national referendum process, this model could be applied at the state and local level: using ballot measures to affirm the best interests of children as a legal standard and guiding democratic principle. It could also serve as a counterweight to efforts that sideline or endanger children in our country, such as Proposition 15 in Texas.
A Strategy for Child Advocacy: Turning Direct Democracy into Children’s Gains
Ballot initiatives are not just about winning a single vote—they’re about reshaping the landscape for kids. When used well, they build public support, unlock new funding, and elevate the visibility of children in our democracy.
Ballot measures are organizing tools. They bring people together around a shared vision. They turn passive frustration into action. They make a movement for children visible, vocal, and victorious.
Focus on High-Impact, Public-Facing Issues
Prioritize issues that resonate with voters and demonstrate clear community benefits:
Early childhood and child care access
Youth mental health and school safety
After-school and summer enrichment
School infrastructure and modernization
Equity in school funding
Start Where the Ground Is Fertile at the Local Level
Statewide measures are expensive and politically risky. But cities, counties, and school districts offer powerful, more manageable arenas where small investments can yield big results.
Groups like the Children’s Funding Project and Funding the Next Generation have shown how modest taxes or earmarked revenues can build sustainable public funds for kids.
As Lea Woods at the Century Foundation points out:
Since 2016, citizens in twenty states have used ballot measures to pass at least thirty-eight new voter-approved child care funds.
Craft Messaging that Moves People
Use values-based, emotionally resonant language:
Moral: “Every child deserves a fair start.”
Economic: “Invest in kids now—or pay more later.”
Community: “What helps children helps everyone.”
Urgency: “Kids can’t wait.”
Build Campaign Infrastructure to Win
Ballot campaigns need more than good ideas:
Legal experts to draft strong language
Volunteers to gather signatures
Organizers to build coalitions
Communicators to shape public narratives
Funders to support outreach and ads
Be Ready to Defend as Well as Offend
For every initiative to help children, there may be another that seeks to harm them. “Parental rights” campaigns are already trying to curtail inclusive education and youth autonomy.
Child advocates need legal strategy, public education capacity, and rapid-response tools to counter these threats.
The Ballot Box Is a Battleground for Children’s Futures
Ballot measures are not a silver bullet, but they are a tool we cannot afford to ignore.
They allow communities to say “yes” to children: yes to funding, yes to services, yes to opportunity. They also allow advocates to challenge efforts that silence or sideline kids.
Voters have shown they are ready to support children’s futures.
The next chapter of children’s policy must be written not only in legislatures, but on ballots – in towns, cities, school districts, and states across this country. We must lift up the successes of the past and turn them into a strategic roadmap for the future.
Children can’t wait. But voters can lead. Let’s give them the chance.
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