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Legislative Referendum

Popular Referendum

Elections Division

I&R Constitutional and Statutory Provisions

Populist State Senator J. H. McConnell of Otter Pond, Kentucky, successfully pushed a statewide I&R bill through the state senate in 1900, but the measure failed in the house. Kentucky initiative advocates had to settle for a state law, passed in 1910, establishing the initiative process in most of the state’s cities.

By the 1970s this municipal I&R provision (Kentucky Revised Statutes, Ch. 89) applied to all of the state’s 27 largest cities except Louisville. In 1980, however, the legislature passed a new municipal government law which abolished the provision.

This state history is based on research found in David Schmidt's book, Citizen Lawmakers: The Ballot Initiative Revolution.