Giving Compass' Take:

• Jessie Hellmann explains how a successful ballot initiative to expand Medicaid in Maine inspired red states to partner with the Fairness Project and attempt to do the same. 

• What are the advantages and disadvantages of ballot initiatives? What issues are best suited to ballot initiatives? 

• Find out how states are funding Medicaid expansions. 

Voters in Idaho, Nebraska, and Utah may have the chance to do something their state lawmakers would not: expand Medicaid to thousands of residents.

After years of being told “no” by GOP-controlled state legislatures, health-care advocacy groups have spent much of 2018 leading campaigns to put the question on the ballot before voters in November.

Behind the scenes, those groups have been aided by The Fairness Project, a Washington-based organization that has become the primary funder of these ballot-initiative campaigns, spending close to $5 million in five states over the past year.

Their first test case: Maine, where Gov. Paul LePage (R) had vetoed expansion five times.

The Fairness Project contributed $728,000 to Mainers for Health Care, the local group pushing for Medicaid expansion, between June 2017 and October 2017. Most of that funding went toward polling, campaign workers and ads.

When the expansion initiative won by 18 points in November 2017, the calls rolled in from advocates in red states who were frustrated by the unwillingness of their state leaders to expand Medicaid.

Now, voters in Idaho, Nebraska and Utah are expected to vote in November on whether to expand Medicaid to more low-income adults.

In Montana, where Medicaid expansion expires in 2019, voters will decide whether they want to make their expansion permanent.

Read the full article about expanding Medicaid in red states by Jessie Hellmann at The Hill.