# Single-Subject Rule A requirement that a ballot measure address only one subject. Seventeen of the twenty-six states with an initiative or popular referendum impose one, and the rule's stated purpose is to prevent logrolling — bundling an unpopular provision with a popular one so voters cannot separate them. What matters in practice is *who applies it and when*, because the rule takes three very different forms. Six states screen before circulation and can stop a petition before a single signature is gathered: Utah's Lieutenant Governor declines to issue signature sheets, Colorado's Title Board sets no ballot title, Massachusetts's Attorney General withholds certification, Ohio's Ballot Board may split the measure into separate questions, and the secretaries of state of North and South Dakota may refuse to approve it for circulation. Florida and Nebraska review it in court before the election. California, Arizona, Missouri, Oregon, Nevada, Alaska, Idaho and Oklahoma leave it to courts after the fact. It is also one of the clearest places where the two routes onto a state ballot are treated unequally. Arizona's Proposition 129 (2022), Nebraska's Amendment 5A (1998) and Colorado's Referendum A (1994) each imposed the rule on citizen initiatives and exempted the legislature's own referrals, and all three were themselves legislative referrals. North Dakota's Constitutional Measure 1, approved at the June 2026 primary, is the rare symmetrical version: it reaches referred amendments as well. Stage 2 of [[How a Ballot Measure Gets on the Ballot]] draws the screen; stage 7 draws what happened when Nebraska's Secretary of State used it in 2026 to remove a measure that would have protected the initiative power.