The strategies that worked in Kansas – countering misinformation, building a broad coalition – offers lessons for other ballot measures

In February, long before organizers in Kansas had made the hundreds of thousands of calls, knocked on the tens of thousands of doors; or did the thousands of media interviews needed to win a monumental race against an anti-abortion amendment, they started having parties.

Sometimes they were small parties: parties where tea and cookies were handed out, and people sat in living rooms getting to know one another. Other times, they sat around a dinner table, drinking wine with strangers.

The ballot measure is the first of many across the country that will decide where and how women can preserve reproductive rights

In the first of a wave of referendums across the country on abortion rights, Kansas voters will decide on Tuesday whether the state’s constitution protects the right to terminate a pregnancy.

Should Kansans pass the ballot measure, it would give state lawmakers leeway to ban the procedure, which they appear likely to do.