GOTV strategy for Wyoming...? Trying to get a Reproductive Rights amendment by ballot initiative

[AnrothElf]

Even just the campaign to attempt to get Reproductive Rights initiative on the ballot would energize us poor, sadsack Wyoming Dems! After all, we were the first state to give women the right to vote. Surely we can convince some Wyoming women to protect themselves?

In states where that campaign was successful, it's been a powerful force to GOTV. Look at Kansas and Ohio.

We're only marginally redder than those red states. What's the difference? I started to wonder. Why haven't Wyoming Dems started a similar campaign? Or maybe they have and I don't know about it? WHY DON'T I KNOW ABOUT IT, THEN?!

I did some Ducking (like Googling but using duck.com) but could find no such existing campaigns.

OK, so I thought, well... What would it take to kick such a campaign off, myself?

So I started Ducking the ballot initiative process in Wyoming... and I found this (no paywall link):

https://web.archive.org/web/20240119003644/https://www.wyomingnews.com/news/local_news/the-winding-journey-to-get-a-ballot-initiative-passed-in-wyoming/article_9dcbada6-b646-11ee-b62b-db6986f95953.html

"The last time an initiative made it from a petition to the ballot was in 1996. That’s a testament to the lengthy, complicated and expensive process."

OK. So not promising. But why? I wondered.

More Ducking... and I found this:

https://ballotpedia.org/Laws_governing_the_initiative_process_in_Wyoming

Key takeaway:

"Citizens may not initiate constitutional amendments. The Wyoming State Legislature, however, may place legislatively referred constitutional amendments on the ballot with a two-thirds majority vote of each chamber." (my emphasis)

OH.

Maybe a ballot initiative to change the law to allow citizens to initiate constitutional amendments?

Maybe not a Reproductive Rights Amendment... maybe something more narrow? A veto referendum on the abortion pills ban, maybe?

It's depressing living in such a red state, knowing that very many like-minded Dems exist here, in a state of permanent dis-empowerment. We're all spread out across this big empty state, but if we had a powerful motivating reason to be more active, we could maybe start to change this utterly corrupt state into something more purplish... like a fresh bruise.

Any fellow Wyoming Dems pickin' up what I'm puttin' down?