Bernie and AOC have a national platform, an energized base, and the infrastructure to gather small donations. Now they need winnable policies to back. It seems impossible in the MAGA-controlled government — unless they turn to state ballot initiatives.
Only 26 states allow direct-to-ballot voter-led initiatives. The rest require the legislature to initiate them.
So, more than half?
Yes, but it’s technically 26 that support them at all. Two of those only allow a ballot veto initiative. Three only allow constitutional amendments (and I just learned that in one of those three, MS, has adjudicated that the requirements are not possible to reach). So only 21 states allow voters to legislate by direct ballot initiative.
https://ballotpedia.org/States_with_initiative_or_referendum
And guess what the venn diagram of states that don’t have them vs those with a shitty unrepresentative legislature (ie the states that need them in order to pass the kinds of things Sanders and AOC are advocating) looks like.
Ballot initiatives for electoral reform in enough states to make third parties viable at the federal level is, in my opinion, less likely than turning the Democratic party through high primary voter turnout. If your state supports them, absolutely take advantage. But if not then you need to both keep fighting to move the needle in the primary while voting in all elections for all levels, and fighting your state legislature for ballot initiatives (and ranked choice/approval voting).