Earlier this month, a group of Oregon lawmakers walked out of work, bringing the Senate to a standstill.

The move came after House Democrats passed bills on abortion, gun safety and medical care for transgender people that Republicans, a minority in the Oregon legislature, strongly opposed.

There is ample room for discussion on each of these topics. In fact, that is the job of those elected to represent us: to draft legislation, discuss its merits, and make amendments where necessary to win the support of a majority of legislators.

The process is not always pretty. (Insert famous line here comparing legislation to making sausage.) Compromises are often frustrating, leaving no one completely satisfied; it can be particularly difficult if your party is outnumbered and you are routinely outvoted.

But that’s how our system works. Or at least how it should be. Elections, as they say, have consequences along with winners and losers.

Increasingly, however, state legislators are ignoring election results and trying to stifle popular sentiment to impose their own will instead.

It is a terrifying move and another blow to our already shaky system of democracy.

In Oregon, you have 12 Republican senators and an independent acting like sore losers, or rather kids who took their ball and went home, delaying hundreds of bills and the passage of the state budget.

The work stoppage, which began May 3, continues even as nearly a dozen lawmakers are disqualified from seeking re-election under a new law designed to prevent such strikes.

More about that later.

Elsewhere, and more insidiously, there are attempts to blunt one of direct democracy’s most effective tools, the citizen-approved initiative, by making it harder for voters to circumvent lawmakers and take action at the polls .

Putting up barriers to voting is bad enough, said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, a progressive group. “Now it’s, ‘How can we limit the power of those … who actually make it to the voting booth? ‘”

Much of the anti-democratic impulse is driven by the abortion issue, which has been at the center of politics since Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court last summer.

Voters quickly took matters into their own hands and passed ballot measures to ensure abortion remains safe and legal in half a dozen states, including conservative strongholds like Kansas, Kentucky and Montana.

GOP lawmakers responded by reaching for handcuffs.

In Ohio, the legislature is battling attempts to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution by trying to make it more difficult to pass an initiative aimed at the November vote.

A special election preemptively scheduled for August will ask voters whether they should raise the threshold to amend the constitution from majority support the abortion measure appears to enjoy to 60%.

Elsewhere, lawmakers aren’t even bothering to seek input from voters.

A bill passed by the Republican-controlled Arkansas legislature and signed by GOP Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is making it harder to qualify ballot measures by more than tripling the number of counties where signatures must be collected, from 15 to 50.

Missouri legislation that would have raised the requirement to pass constitutional amendments from a simple majority to 57% was hushed up, but Republicans vowed to bring it up again next year in an effort to thwart an abortion rights initiative.

Similar efforts to undermine citizen democracy are underway or under consideration in Idaho, North Dakota, and Wisconsin

all states where the GOP controls the legislature.

If you think the country’s political polarization and bone-deep partisanship are bad right now, wait and see.

“Ballot measures provide a way to say you don’t have to be all-or-nothing,” said Hall, who works through the Fairness Project to push progressive legislation through citizen-led efforts.

“You can be a veteran conservative,” she continued, but she also wants higher wages, legalized abortion and expanded health care and will vote, given the chance, to enact those policies if lawmakers refuse.

“There are fewer and fewer opportunities for people to even participate in those conversations,” Hall said.

In Oregon, where GOP lawmakers walked out of their jobs in 2019, 2020 and 2021, fed up voters approved a ballot initiative last November to end the kind of political irritability now on display. (Two-thirds of the Senate’s 30 members must be present to pass legislation.)

Pressed by the political left, Measure 113 amended the Oregon Constitution to say that any legislator who misses 10 or more floor sessions will be disqualified from holding office as a senator or representative for the term following their current term. It became law with nearly 70% support.

“It passed in Republican districts. It passed in Democratic districts. It passed across the board,” said Jim Moore, who teaches political science at Pacific University, outside of Portland. The message, he said, was that “people want their legislators to show up at work regardless of party.”

However, there is room for interpretation. It’s unclear if the measure will stop a penalized legislator from pursuing re-election, raising the prospect that they could run, win the most votes and then not sit, which could result in a whole other order of chaos.

On Tuesday, Senate Republicans indicated they would stay out until June 25, the last day of the legislative session.

Meanwhile, they have set up a political action committee to raise funds for the boycott and challenge Measure 113 in court.

When it came to elections, people always said that the people had spoken and that was the last word. But now, ominously, a growing number of lawmakers are refusing to pay attention.

If they are voted down, others may listen better.