We investigate voter preferences for changes in voting rules, focusing specifically on the creation of citizen-initiative processes that were originally adopted in South Dakota in 1898 and eventually enacted by half of the states. Various claims have been advanced about why the process was adopted and who supported or opposed it, but without presenting evidence from referenda where voters approved the creation of the process. We test these claims by examining county-level election returns from South Dakota’s 1898 referendum that created the first statewide initiative process in the United States. We find that support for the initiative process was generally higher among groups that are disadvantaged in various ways by existing representative institutions and perceive advantages in creating direct democratic institutions capable of bypassing representative processes. These findings stand in contrast to the notion that the adoption of constitutional rules will be relatively free from calculations rooted in self-interest and perceived advantage from the rules changes.
