In 2026, certain states are considering tightening the rules for constitutional initiatives: South Dakota is examining a 60% threshold, while Missouri proposes a majority in each congressional district. Colorado and Florida already apply thresholds of 55% and 60% respectively. In 2024, voters in Washington, D.C. approved Initiative 83, which notably established ranked-choice voting, by 72.89% of votes; this result cannot be generalized to four other cities without distinct local results.

The Essential Points

  • Democracies reform in two antagonistic ways: by raising thresholds to make changes more difficult, or by adopting voting systems that expand representation.
  • In 2026, five American states are examining constitutional revision thresholds of 55-60%, according to NPR; in 2024, DC and four cities voted 73% in favor of ranked-choice voting.
  • Raising a revision threshold transforms an organized minority into a permanent constitutional veto over electoral majorities.
  • Ranked-choice voting, conversely, is a reform adopted by broad majorities to better aggregate preferences: the mechanism operates in the opposite direction.
  • If this bifurcation persists toward 2030-2035, the United States could see states that are constitutionally rigid coexisting with cities that freely experiment with their own democratic rules.

Two States in One Country

In 2026, NPR documents proposals aimed at tightening the conditions for adopting certain constitutional amendments or fiscal measures; this article does not constitute a source on municipal adoptions of electoral reforms. The fifty states each have their own thresholds, citizen initiative mechanisms, and revision rules.

The details matter. Raising a constitutional revision threshold from 50 to 60% does not simply mean convincing slightly more people. A 60% threshold allows 41% of voters to block a proposal receiving 59% of votes. With a 60% threshold, a coalition of at least 41% of voters can block a measure; a partisan base of one-third is insufficient on its own. The promoters of these proposals often acknowledge this openly: the goal is to protect fundamentals against passing whims.

Their opponents respond that yesterday’s fundamentals can become today’s absurdities.

This debate is ancient. The controversy is as old as the Federalist Papers, where Hamilton and Madison debated the tension between constitutional stability and adaptability. But it takes on a new form in America in the 2020s, where the citizen-initiated referendum has become an ordinary instrument of political life in dozens of states: sometimes to circumvent blocked legislatures, sometimes to enshrine transitory majoritarian preferences in stone.

The Blocking Minority as Deliberate Architecture

A 60% threshold is a choice of constitutional architecture. It presupposes that stability has greater value than democratic responsiveness, and that simple majorities are too volatile to modify fundamental rules. This position is defensible, and several established democracies share it: Germany requires a two-thirds majority in the Bundestag and Bundesrat to amend the Basic Law, and this rule has contributed to regime stability since 1949.

The American context differs on one crucial point. In several states with direct initiatives, citizens can propose both ordinary laws and constitutional amendments; the constitution is therefore not necessarily the only pathway. Voters have directly adopted laws or constitutional amendments on these subjects in different states; one must distinguish statutory initiatives from constitutional amendments and not assign a single motive without a source.

Raising a threshold may make constitutional amendments more difficult to adopt, but this demonstrates neither an intention to lock things in nor the existence of a single pathway for citizen reform. Some proposals to raise thresholds occur in states where citizen initiatives had recently succeeded. Correlation does not prove causality, but it deserves to be examined directly.

In 2026, Missouri submitted a measure modifying the conditions for adopting constitutional initiatives. In Missouri, the measure would modify the conditions under which voters can amend the constitution. There is something expeditious about the mechanism: an ordinary legislative majority could, in certain states, vote to make revision more difficult for a future supermajority of citizens.

Ranked-Choice Voting, a Reform That Cities Adopt at 73%

The other movement documents the exact opposite. Official data allow us to assert that Washington, D.C. approved Initiative 83 by 72.89%, but not to generalize this result to four cities or to attribute it to an unidentified NPR compilation. Ranked-choice voting, or preferential voting, is a mechanism where voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate obtains an absolute majority in the first count, the votes of the lowest-ranked candidate are redistributed according to second preferences, and so on until a candidate crosses the threshold.

The practical effect is twofold. Ranked-choice voting reduces the phenomenon of strategic voting: a voter can support a marginal candidate as a first choice without fearing a wasted vote. It also reduces incentives for fear-based politics, where a candidate wins by demonizing his opponent rather than seeking to convince supporters of others. A candidate seeking to gather second-choice votes from opposing voters has an interest in remaining acceptable in their eyes. It is subtle mechanics, and its effects on polarization are debated, but several academic studies suggest it lowers the tone of campaigns in districts where it is practiced.

What is striking in the 2024 results is the breadth of majorities. In Washington, D.C., Initiative 83 obtained 72.89% of votes; this result alone does not allow us to conclude comparable cross-partisan support in several cities. Cities that voted for ranked-choice voting did so with the approval of their voters. This contrasts with the logic of high constitutional revision thresholds, which presuppose that majorities are dangerous and must be constrained.

One finds here a tension that Chat Control’s adoption by a minority in Europe illustrates in a different register: decisions structuring the rules of democratic play adopted without broad consultation, or conversely with consultation that concludes in the opposite direction from the path institutions took. The rules of democracy are never neutral. They always favor someone.

The History of Super-Majorities

Democracies have always used super-majorities to protect certain decisions from ordinary instability. The American Constitution itself requires two-thirds of Congress and ratification by three-quarters of the states to be amended, which has rendered it virtually unmodifiable on fundamental questions for more than a century. This was an assumed choice of the founders, who wanted fundamental rights to escape the passions of the moment.

The problem arises when this level of protection, designed for rare and solemn foundational texts, is applied to direct democracy instruments serving as daily legislative substitutes. In February 2026, Brookings published an analysis of presidential authority over federal election regulation; no Brookings analysis found documents the alleged correlation between state constitutional rigidity and recourse to executive orders or emergency procedures. When the constitutional pathway closes, political actors may resort to other channels. The effects of rigidity on forms of political action vary by context. And displacement channels are often less transparent, less deliberative, less subject to citizen control.

Strict constitutional locks can have variable effects depending on contexts. In some contexts, a democracy whose reform rules are highly constraining may see actors resort to means that circumvent established procedures. The history of regimes that accumulated constitutional blockages for decades before a sudden rupture does not encourage optimism on this point.

The Bifurcation Opening Toward 2035

If these dynamics are confirmed, the United States could experience a visible constitutional bifurcation. In some states, high revision thresholds would make constitutions harder to modify, with variable institutional effects depending on contexts. In others, cities and states would have experimented with electoral reforms like ranked-choice voting, which can modify candidate incentives and electoral outcomes, but whose evidence for general polarization reduction is limited and heterogeneous.

This bifurcation scenario merits examination with caution, as it remains conditional. The dynamic of citizen initiatives can reverse: states that adopted ranked-choice voting could backtrack under pressure from dominant parties that lose from it. Maine adopted ranked-choice voting by referendum in 2016, and the state legislature immediately attempted to neutralize it. Conversely, states raising their constitutional thresholds are not necessarily doing so for the same reasons or with the same effects: some seek to protect themselves against poorly designed populist initiatives, which is not without foundation.

Three signals would allow distinguishing a durable trend from passing turmoil. The first is the number of states that actually modify their thresholds by 2028: if five states examine and two or three adopt, the movement is real. The second is the rate of blocked constitutional revisions in these states over the following decade: a 60% threshold that blocks nothing in practice is less concerning than a threshold that systematically prevents broad majorities from modifying obsolete provisions. Brookings publishes analyses on executive power and emergency situations, but available studies do not permit establishing this precise correlation with state constitutional rigidity.

There exists a third trajectory, less dramatic and perhaps more likely: the durable coexistence of two constitutional Americas, one more rigid and the other more experimental, without the tension between them provoking acute crisis. The United States has a long tradition of constitutional variation between states, and this variation has often served as a laboratory for identifying what works. Ranked-choice voting was experimented with first locally before several states considered it on a larger scale. Reforms adopted in cities like Washington or San Francisco have sometimes prefigured national developments ten or twenty years later.

This logic of the federal laboratory is one of the structural strengths of American democracy. It presupposes that experiments succeed or fail in legible ways, and that political actors learn lessons from these experiments. Both conditions are today fragile: polarization makes shared reading of results more difficult, and interests benefiting from the status quo have the means to obfuscate comparisons.

Who Decides the Rules of the Game, and How

The question posed by the two dynamics of 2026 is ultimately one of meta-power: who has the right to set the conditions under which collective decisions are made? In liberal democracies, this question has traditionally had an institutional answer: constituent assemblies, super-majorities, special procedures. When these special procedures are perceived as lockdown instruments serving organized minorities, their legitimacy can be contested.

Initiative 83 was approved by 72.89% of voters in Washington, D.C. in 2024; this result attests to a strong local majority, but neither demonstrates the same level in several cities nor measured improvement in democratic deliberation. This result testifies to local support for this reform. Some studies and case studies suggest that ranked-choice voting can encourage campaign strategies targeting second choices and alliances between candidates; evidence remains limited and does not permit asserting generally that elected officials govern more through broad coalitions.

The stakes extend beyond the American framework. In all advanced democracies, control of the meta-rules of political competition is at the center of current institutional tensions. Mechanisms of discreet surveillance accompanying formally free elections in Asia represent an extreme version: formally democratic rules emptied of substance by mechanisms designed to produce a predetermined result. High constitutional thresholds are not of this nature, but they raise the same fundamental question: at what point does a rule designed to protect democracy begin to constrain it.

The answer depends on what the rule actually protects and who benefits from its permanence. A 60% threshold preventing a 59% majority from enshrining reproductive rights or campaign finance reform in its constitution merits prudent examination. Invoking constitutional stability then covers a choice about which preferences the rule protects and which it excludes.

Future citizen initiatives in American states examining these proposals could provide empirical evidence. In some contexts, if majorities seeking to modify their constitutions encounter blocking minorities, pressure toward other forms of political expression—executive, judicial, or extra-parliamentary—may intensify. Following this correlation in the coming years will say much about the capacity of American institutions to absorb their own tensions without exporting them toward less controlled forms of political change.

Sources

  1. NPR, Direct democracy and state constitutional amendment thresholds (July 2026)
  2. Issue One, Tracking Electoral Reforms and Constitutional Initiatives (November 2024) [no link: URL not verified]
  3. Brookings Institution, Analysis of Constitutional Rigidity and Resort to the Executive (February 2026) [no link: URL not verified]