Frequently Asked Questions – Action Plan

A:

Ballot initiative is a matter of suffrage. We are in this for the long run. To gain some perspective, compare our effort to the women’s suffrage movement (Waters, 2003, p. 504):

Carrie Chapman Catt summarized the women’s suffrage effort when she said, "[t]o get the word ‘male’ in effect out of the Constitution cost the women of the country fifty-two years of pauseless campaign…During that time they were forced to conduct fifty-six [initiative] referenda campaigns to male voters; 480 campaigns to get legislatures to submit suffrage amendments to voters; 47 campaigns to get state constitutional conventions to write woman suffrage into state constitutions; 277 campaigns to get state party conventions to include woman suffrage planks in party platforms, 30 campaigns to get presidential party conventions to adopt women’s suffrage planks into party platforms, and 19 campaigns with 19 successive Congresses."