Abortion rights supporters filed a lawsuit last week against what they call “deceptive” ballot language produced by Ohio officials for the state’s closely-watched upcoming referendum on the issue.

But it isn’t just the Buckeye State that’s lately seeing fierce battles over the once-obscure topic of ballot language.

In recent weeks, officials in Missouri — where another abortion rights measure is at issue — and Idaho also have been accused in lawsuits of seeking to thwart citizen initiatives they oppose by using biased and negative ballot language to describe the issue to voters. Arkansas last year saw a similar court fight after a state board rejected a proposed ballot measure that had gained the required number of signatures, claiming the ballot language didn’t explain the issue in enough detail.

Direct democracy advocates see these language disputes as another tactic in the larger war on ballot initiatives playing out across the country. As States Newsroom has reported, in recent years a slew of states has tried to crack down on ballot measures by imposing more onerous signature requirements or raising the threshold for voter approval above a simple majority, among other steps. It’s no coincidence that in all four of the states where controversies over ballot language have flared most prominently, Republican lawmakers have tried other tacks — so far unsuccessfully — to restrict ballot measures more broadly.

Even if misleading ballot language ultimately gets thrown out by the courts, advocates say, these fights can raise the costs of bringing initiatives by requiring supporters to engage in lengthy litigation. And in some states, signature-gathering can’t start until ballot language is approved — meaning delays caused by fights over language can eat into the limited timeframe that organizers have to get the necessary signatures.

“This has been an escalating effort to attack ballot titles,” said Sarah Walker, director of legal and policy advocacy at the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, which provides support for progressive ballot measures. “It’s just more of a long trajectory of efforts to undermine the will of the voters. And it shows how far politicians who are out of step with voters are willing to go to consolidate their power.”

The claims of biased language also raise questions about the role of secretaries of state and other state officials in administering the ballot measure process. Though they may support or oppose ballot measures, there has long been an expectation that state election officials must perform their duties fairly and impartially — just as they’re expected to do when running conventional elections involving candidates.

But in the current hyperpartisan political climate, that expectation may be breaking down, leaving good-government advocates concerned.

“A politicized, partisan secretary of state can completely distort public understanding of a ballot question through their control of the summary language,” said Kevin Johnson, executive director of Election Reformers Network, which backs reforms aimed at removing partisanship from election administration. (Disclosure: This reporter worked for several months in 2022 as a communications consultant for ERN.) “We would never accept a referee playing for one team in sports and we shouldn’t in elections either.”

Johnson pointed to Missouri, where Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, a Republican who opposes abortion rights, approved a ballot title in July that asks voters if they want to protect “dangerous, unregulated, and unrestricted abortions, from contraception to live birth.” The title also asks voters if they want to “nullify longstanding Missouri law protecting the right to life.”

A lawsuit filed by Missouri’s ACLU chapter seeks to require Ashcroft, who is running for the GOP nomination for governor, to use more neutral wording.

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, a Republican who opposes abortion rights, approved a ballot title that asks voters if they want to protect “dangerous, unregulated, and unrestricted abortions, from contraception to live birth.” Official photo

The skewed language came after Republican-authored legislation that would have required ballot initiatives to gain 57% approval, rather than a simple majority, unexpectedly died in the state Senate in May, after passing the House. Lawmakers have pledged to try again next year, saying the goal is to thwart the abortion rights measure.

A proposed constitutional amendment, for which a petition was filed recently with the state by a grassroots organizing group, aims to protect Missouri’s ballot initiative process. Among other steps, it would ensure that ballot titles “express the true intent and meaning” of the measure at issue.

Events in Ohio have followed a strikingly similar pattern. First, lawmakers drafted a ballot measure, Issue 1, that aimed to make it harder to use ballot initiatives to amend the state constitution by requiring 60% voter approval, among other steps. Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who is running in a competitive Republican primary for the U.S. Senate nomination, told fellow GOPers the change was needed to stop a proposed amendment protecting abortion rights.

In his official role, LaRose approved ballot language for Issue 1 that said the measure would “elevate the standards” for constitutional amendments — wording that Issue 1 opponents called overly positive.

After voters overwhelmingly rejected Issue 1 last month, Republicans tried another approach to stop the abortion rights measure, which voters will decide in November.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who is running in a competitive Republican primary for the U.S. Senate nomination, told fellow Republicans making it more difficult to amend the state constitution was needed to stop a proposed amendment protecting abortion rights. Susan Tebben/Ohio Capital Journal

On a 3-2 party-line vote, the state Ballot Board, which is chaired by LaRose, approved a ballot summary drafted by his office which uses the term “unborn child” in place of the more medically accurate “fetus.” The summary also tells voters that the amendment would “always allow an unborn child to be aborted” if a doctor decides it’s medically necessary. The actual language of the amendment would bar such an abortion unless the patient agrees to it.

At the meeting to vote on the language, one Republican board member called the abortion rights amendment “dangerous” and pledged to fight “tirelessly” against it.

“The Ballot Board’s members adopted politicized, distorted language for the amendment, exploiting their authority in a last ditch effort to deceive and confuse Ohio voters ahead of the November vote on reproductive freedom,” Lauren Blauvelt of Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights said in a statement.

In Idaho, it’s not abortion rights at issue. But the larger contours of the dispute are familiar.

Organizers of a proposed ballot initiative to create open primaries sued Attorney General Raúl Labrador over the ballot title his office produced. The title told voters that the measure would “replace voter selection of party nominees with nonparty blanket primary.”

In fact, supporters of the initiative said, voters would still choose nominees. But instead of having closed primaries in which only members of the major parties can vote, everyone would get to vote and the top four finishers, regardless of party, would advance to the general election.

Labrador, a Republican, hasn’t sought to hide his opposition to the measure. “Let’s defeat these bad ideas coming from liberal outside groups,” he tweeted in May.

After being ordered to do so by the Idaho Supreme Court, Labrador submitted new titles that were then certified by the court, but the delay caused by litigation could prove fatal to the measure’s chances, supporters say.

“[I]t shortens the already limited time to circulate the initiative petition for signatures,” they wrote in court filings. “This delay alone may doom the possibility of the initiative reaching the ballot.”

Idaho’s legislature has for years sought to restrict ballot measures. In March, a resolution that would have imposed stiffer signature-gathering requirements for ballot initiatives passed the state House by 39-31 but failed to win the two-thirds majority needed to go to voters. In 2021, Idaho’s Supreme Court struck down a similar measure passed by lawmakers.

In Arkansas, things played out a bit differently. Last year, the State Board of Election Commissioners rejected a ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana, saying that the ballot language didn’t adequately explain the proposal. For instance, they said the measure didn’t tell voters that it would repeal the state’s limit, under its medical marijuana law, on how much THC is allowed in edible marijuana.

A lawyer for the coalition backing the measure said that level of detail “simply is not workable for a ballot.”

After a legal challenge, the measure was approved for the ballot, but it was rejected by voters.

Arkansas voters also rejected an effort by lawmakers to make ballot measures harder to pass. Like Ohio’s Issue 1, it would have required a 60% threshold for approval.

Ohio Issue 1 would have required 60% voter approval to amend the state constitution. Ohio Capital Journal

State officials who have tried to use misleading language to boost their side have more often lately been looking to defeat, rather than help, a ballot initiative. But the same scheme is sometimes used to boost a measure’s chances.

Language written by Republican lawmakers in Kansas for last year’s high-profile effort to ban abortion in the state said the measure would “reserve to the people the right to regulate abortion.” It also said the measure would “affirm there is no constitutional right to abortion or to require the government funding of abortion.”

In fact, the state Supreme Court had previously found that there is a right to abortion, meaning the measure would have taken it away. And government funding of abortion was already illegal.

“The language was very misleading,” said Rachel Sweet, an abortion rights advocate who played a key role in the successful campaign to defeat the Kansas measure. “We really had to clearly define for people what that amendment was actually trying to do.”

There is some evidence that how a ballot measure is worded can affect the level of support it receives. A 2021 study found that people were almost twice as likely to back a hypothetical tax increase to fund education when it was described as an additional “one cent per dollar,” compared to when it was described as “a 22 percent increase.”

“As a general matter,” wrote the study’s author, University of Georgia political scientist Ted Rossier, “state institutions that are responsible for writing ballot questions, as well as the courts that hear challenges thereto, must remain mindful of the potential for nefarious manipulation of the process.”

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News consumers haven't heard much over the past couple of weeks about the economy, terrorism, health care, or Iraq. The talk has instead been focused on Vietnam, thanks to the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth.

The group has released two ads and a book denouncing John Kerry as a dishonorable man who lied to earn his medals, lied to Congress as an antiwar activist, and who ultimately betrayed his countrymen. Liberal commentators, not unjustifiably, are blaming the SBVFT for polluting campaign rhetoric with their loaded claims and harsh attacks.

The SBVFT may have a questionable grasp of the facts, but they have been extraordinarily sophisticated in their manipulation of the media. Their ads, after all, have appeared in just three states – and represent the kind of strident attack that might easily have quickly dropped off the national radar screen.

But the lion's share of the blame should not fall on their shoulders. To understand why this campaign has been hijacked by a small group of veterans bearing a thirty-year old grudge, it's worth examining the institutional susceptibilities of a campaign press corps that has allowed the SBVFT's accusations to take on a life of their own. The Swift Boat Vets may have put themselves in the game, but they were made stars by a flawed media.

Campaign Desk has written many times about the perils of "he said/she said" journalism, the practice of reporters parroting competing rhetoric instead of measuring it for veracity against known facts. In the wake of the first SBVFT spot early this month, cable news programs for the most part offered viewers two talking heads, one on each side of the issue, to debate the merits of the claims. Verifiable facts were rarely offered to viewers – despite the fact that military records supporting Kerry's version of events were readily available.

Instead of acting as filters for the truth, reporters nodded and attentively transcribed both sides of the story, invariably failing to provide context, background, or any sense of which claims held up and which were misleading. And sometimes even that was asking too much.

According to Media Matters, the Aug. 4th editions of FOX News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes" and MSNBC's "Scarborough Country" both reported and aired the ad without mentioning (1) that despite the ad's claims, those featured in it did not serve on Kerry's boat, (2) that the SBVFT has extensive Republican ties, dating all the way back to former Nixon protege John O'Neill, or (3) the fact that the doctor who claims to have treated Kerry in the ad was not the medical official who signed his medical records.

Why was the press happy to keep afloat a story so easily debunked?

There were several factors at work here. To begin with, the initial ad by the Swift Boat Vets came out in August, which had shaped up to be a slow news month, politically speaking. Issues like Kerry's health-care plan weren't capturing viewers' imaginations, there hadn't been a terrorist attack or notable capture for months, and Iraq – continuing U.S. casualties notwithstanding – wasn't generating much new news. With its natural bias towards ratings-generating conflict, the media readily embraced the SBVFT story, which, with its harsh allegations and clearly demarcated opposing sides, had about it the smell of blood in the water.

As radio talk shows and cable shoutfests seized upon the "story," the few outlets that initially ignored it or gave it little play were forced to ratchet up their coverage – a classic example of the elements of the media lower down the professional food chain effectively setting the news agenda. Yesterday, Alison Mitchell, deputy national editor of the New York Times, confessed to Editor & Publisher magazine, "I'm not sure that in an era of no cable television we would even have looked into it." James O'Shea, managing editor of the Chicago Tribune, fretted in the same article about feeling forced to follow a story that he might not otherwise bother with – just because it received so much air time from the carnival barkers who populate daytime cable and radio.

That sort of impetus could have been avoided had news organizations been more aggressive in exploring the SBVFT when it was first launched. In May, without much fanfare, SBVFT held a press conference announcing the group's formation and laid out its agenda. In an open letter to Sen. Kerry, the group wrote, "Further, we believe that you have withheld and/or distorted material facts as to your own conduct in this war." It also announced its intention to publicly examine Kerry's war record in a press release.

ABC and NBC ignored the development entirely on their nightly news broadcasts on that day, while CBS provided a short report. On Fox News, political correspondent Carl Cameron delivered a report remarkable for its similarity to those seen on TV in recent weeks. He recapped comments from veterans both in support and critical of John Kerry, adding that some of the veterans who are now critical of Kerry previously supported him in 1996. According to Cameron, the Bush campaign denied any involvement in the attacks. Kerry, he said, was doing his best to stay out of the fray. And with that (after a few brief debates on "Hannity & Colmes"), the story was laid to bed.

In June and July, the press hardly moved the story an inch. By the time the SBVFT resurfaced in early August with its first ad, the story had lain fallow for three months. So the news reports that came out in the wake of the ad elaborated little on Cameron's original story. No news organization, it seems, had seen fit to launch a more thorough investigation into the veterans, despite their coming-out party months before.

The "fog of war" can cloud newsrooms just as much as it does battlefields, of course. But given the SBVFT's open letter and virtual declaration of war on Kerry in the spring, such investigations should have been conducted as a matter of course.

Throughout August, even as the Swift Boat Vets' book hit bookstores and a second ad rolled out, the campaign press mostly continued to frame the story as a "he said/she said" battle – at least until last week, when what had been an oddly quiescent press corps lurched awake and began to subject the story to closer scrutiny. The New York Times and Washington Post published articles highly critical of the SBVFT earlier this week, and the Times today meticulously laid out the connections between the Swift Boat Vets on the one hand, and lawyers, political strategists and donors to the Bush campaign on the other.

After countless unchallenged segments on the cable news shows and print articles repeating a variety of erroneous SBVFT claims, the mainstream press has belatedly awakened from its summer dormancy and measured spurious claims against known facts. But it has come far too late.

Reporters can, and do, argue that it is not their job to ascertain the veracity of such claims unless and until the Kerry campaign itself raises its voice in protest. But even if you buy that antiquated job description of a good reporter – and we don't – there's another ball that most of the press dropped in its coverage of the imbroglio. Once the Kerry campaign itself began to hit back by questioning the credibility of the Swift Boat Veterans' claims – and arguing that the group was doing the president's "dirty work" – the press failed to adequately scrutinize the competing arguments at hand. When Kerry called on Bush to condemn the Swift Boat ads, the White House pointed out that the president had himself been the target of harsh attack ads run by independent "527" groups supporting Kerry, and repeated its months-old contention that all such outside advertising should be banned.

The press dutifully reported this argument. But rarely if ever did reporters see fit to assess the validity of the comparison being made by the Bush campaign. The anti-Bush ad most often cited by the White House as comparable to the Swift Boat spot was a MoveOn spot questioning the president's service in the National Guard. But each one of the claims made in the MoveOn ad – that Bush used family connections to get into the Guard, that he was grounded after failing to show up for a physical, that he wasn't seen at a guard meeting for months, and that he was released eight months early to attend Harvard Business School – is not in dispute. The overall tenor of the ad is harsh, to be sure – so harsh, in fact, that Kerry quickly called it "irresponsible" – but there has been no real argument that any of its assertions are untrue.

Compare that to the Swift Boat ads. Given that military records support Kerry's version of events, and that the credibility of many of Kerry's accusers is now in doubt, it would seem that if anyone should be on the defensive for lacking corroboration and documentation, it's those defending Bush's service record, not that of Kerry. No anti-Bush ad from MoveOn flies in the face of the preponderance of evidence in the way that the Swift Boat ad does. The press, then, should have pointed out the illogic of grouping the two spots as one and the same.

In the end, as always, the information that voters receive depends entirely on the way in which the press frames the story. The problem is that once an easy storyline is entrenched – that the issue is essentially a disagreement between Kerry and his detractors – too many reporters fail to press on. In this case, they neglected either to test the veracity of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth or to compare their ads with those financed by other 527s like MoveOn.

There have been dozens of press failures during this presidential campaign. But this one, even given the Times' and the Post's belated efforts to get to the bottom of things, has to rank as a low point.

And it certainly did nothing to help the mainstream press' credibility with what is an increasingly dubious audience. The most telling comment on that front may well have come from the unlikely duo of Jon Stewart and Ted Koppel, who shared a telecast during the Democratic convention. Koppel, by way of introducing his own viewers to Stewart, complained that "a lot of television viewers – more, quite frankly, than I'm comfortable with" – get their news from Stewart's "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central.

Stewart, seemingly trying to reassure Koppel, responded that what his fans were watching for was not news per se, but rather a "comedic interpretation" of the news. Koppel was unmoved. Stewart's audience watches him "to be informed," Koppel insisted. "They actually think they're coming closer to the truth with your show."

With that, Stewart pounced. "Now that's a different thing, that's credibility; that's a different animal."

Yes, it is.

David Brock is the author of four political books, including the forthcoming The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy (to be released this month by Crown). His preceding book, Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative, was a 2002 New York Times best-selling political memoir in which he chronicled his years as a conservative media insider. This week, Brock launched Media Matters for America, a Web site that monitors and corrects conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.

Zachary Roth: Tell us about the thinking that led you to set up Media Matters. How did the project come about?

David Brock: Living and working inside the conservative media machine for nearly ten years, I saw firsthand false and misleading information being churned out daily and corrupting media discourse. In the process of writing my new book, Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy, I realized that the right wing had spent tens of millions of dollars, going all the way back to 1969 with the founding of Accuracy In Media, on organizations that monitor the media, and that this was a huge part of their success: They succeeded in pushing the media, and public perception of the media, to the right.

As I looked into the Right's successful 30-year effort to influence the media, I realized it would take more than a book to address the problem of conservative misinformation in the media. That's what prompted me to found Media Matters for America. We have put in place, for the first time, the means to systematically monitor the media for conservative misinformation -- every day, in real time -- in 2004 and beyond.

How do you plan to measure success for the project? In other words, what's the ultimate goal, and how will you know you've achieved it?

Our goal is to educate both producers and consumers of news about the false and misleading information being generated by conservatives and dominating media of current affairs. At the very least, we would like responsible news outlets to stop repeating and relying on conservative misinformation. We believe steadily and consistently discrediting the reliability of purveyors of conservative misinformation will alter the media landscape.

As you no doubt know, since the 2000 election, a lot of "media monitoring" projects have sprung up, mostly on the Internet. How will Media Matters be different?

Media Matters for America is part of a larger group of progressive organizations with a shared mission -- leveling the playing field and going toe-to-toe with the right in all areas of debate.

I've been very impressed with a lot of the work various people have done on this general topic. I hate to name names, because for everyone I mention, there are probably three others who deserve the recognition as well, but certainly, Bob Somerby, CJR [Campaign Desk], Atrios and Scoobie Davis have all done a great job of pointing out some of the media's failings.

We will add to the reach and depth of these Internet resources by consistently and thoroughly monitoring and correcting conservative misinformation in the media. Unlike CJR, we're focusing specifically on conservative misinformation. And unlike Atrios and Scoobie Davis and many others, we're dedicated exclusively to monitoring and correcting conservative misinformation in the media -- it isn't our mission to respond to or rebut President Bush or Karl Rove or the Republican National Committee: We're focused on the media and pundit class. And our work is rooted in fact, not bias and commentary.

So, we believe our work will fortify the work of Somerby, CJR [Campaign Desk], Atrios and others. We believe the more voices speaking out against the deluge of conservative misinformation in the American media, the better, and so we hope to become a clearinghouse of sorts for some of the best work on this topic.

Some of your critics on the right (for instance Tim Graham, writing on the National Review Website) have questioned your credibility for this project. Graham argues that since you've admitted to acting with little regard for the truth during your years as a cog in the conservative media/political operation, you're not the best person to be identifying media bias. How do you respond to that? In addition, do you think the fact that your site monitors only conservative media bias makes it easier for critics to dismiss as partisan?

First, a clarification: Our goal is not to identify media "bias." Our goal is to identify and correct conservative misinformation: that is, information that furthers a conservative viewpoint and that is inaccurate, misleading, a distortion, or outrageous. We don't care whether this misinformation comes from Rush Limbaugh or Dan Rather: When we see it, we're going to correct it. Unlike our counterparts on the right, we don't plan on engaging in mind-reading to try to determine the media's intent or ideology: We're more concerned with results than motives.

For example, in 2000, many in the media inaccurately reported that Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet. You don't have to claim that the media outlets that reported this "fact" have a conservative bias in order to say that it helped advance a conservative viewpoint, and that it was misinformation.

So we're not as concerned with bias as we are with a lot of other things, and we don't plan to monitor "only conservative media" -- that isn't our intention at all.

As for my personal qualifications, nobody knows better than I how conservative misinformation spreads through the media. The difference between many of my conservative critics and me is that I've renounced my behavior, and am now combating the misinformation many of them still spread.

What kind of response, if any, have you had from Limbaugh, O'Reilly, etc. since you started up? Do you get a lot of hate mail?

Rush Limbaugh doesn't seem to like us, which is no real surprise: One of the first items on our web page catalogued 77 of his most outrageous comments in recent weeks, including his claim that many women "actually wish" sexual harassment "would happen to them."

Overall, though, we've gotten very positive feedback: from the public in general; from the online community; even from some conservative media figures. Ramesh Ponnuru at the National Review has had some very critical comments, but he's also said "the scrutiny may help us do a better job -- so I'm actually looking forward to reading what his group puts out."

I think the fact that we aren't -- despite what some of our critics say -- particularly interested in "bias," but are focusing instead on misinformation helps make reactions like Ponnuru's possible: Reporters, commentators, pundits and columnists know that we aren't here to impugn their motives, but to correct misinformation in the media -- and many of them know that they are as much a victim of that misinformation as their readers are.

Zachary Roth is a reporter with Campaigndesk.org.