M. Dane Waters (born 1964) is a political strategist, elephant protection advocate, writer, and direct democracy advocate. He has worked on six continents providing strategic advice to campaigns, governments, activists, academic institutions, and NGO’s. He has also consulted on projects with the United Nations, the U.S. Department of State and the International Republican Institute. He was a political appointee in President George H. W. Bush’s administration, served as the Political Director of the Humane Society Legislative Fund and Director of Ballot Campaigns for the Humane Society of the United States and was the National Field Director for U.S. Term Limits. Career Political campaigns Dane has worked on six U.S. Presidential campaigns in various paid and volunteer positions – Reagan/Bush (1984), Bush/Quayle (1988), Phil Graham (1996), John McCain (2000), McCain/Palin (2008) , and John Kasich (2016). He has also worked on numerous other candidate elections in the U.S. as well as presidential and prime ministerial campaigns around the world. Dane has also been involved in numerous independent expenditure campaigns as the Political Director of the Humane Society Legislative Fund (HSLF). In 2020, he endorsed Democrat Joe Biden for president. Direct democracy Dane has worked on dozens of direct democracy campaigns in the U.S. and around the world and is one of the few people who has worked on all aspects of direct democracy campaigns – researching and writing on direct democracy, advising activists on direct democracy issues, helping governments draft direct democracy laws, helping win or defeat an issue on the ballot, to providing international observers to ensure that a referendum election meets internationally accepted norms. Dane began his work with ballot campaigns as the National Field Director for U.S. Term Limits where he helped place a record number of term limit initiatives on the ballot between 1992-1998. These ballot initiatives helped voters in 23 states place term limits on their congressional delegations. Today there are term limits on 36 governors, 15 state legislatures and thousands of local officials because of these term limit initiatives. Dane is the founder and Chair of the Initiative & Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California – a non-profit non-partisan research and educational organization established to study direct democracy. He is the co-founder of the Initiative & Referendum Institute Europe. Dane also serves on the board of Democracy International, an organization that works to strengthen direct democracy opportunities around the world. Dane has authored