Lawmakers in both parties are trying to make it harder for citizens to place measures on ballots.
Lawmakers in both parties are trying to make it harder for citizens to place measures on ballots.
C itizen lawmaking is under attack as never before — from both Democrats and Republicans.
More and more state legislatures have made it harder for voters to place initiatives on the ballot in the 26 states that allow for some form of the process.
Republicans are upset that progressives have used initiatives to legalize marijuana and raise the minimum wage. Democrats are troubled that their attempts to impose taxes and regulations in progressive states such as Oregon, California, and Washington state are often thwarted by voter referendums.
So it’s no surprise that legislatures in more than 20 states are debating bills to make it more difficult for citizens to employ ballot measures to change public policy.
In Arizona, GOP legislators are pushing to raise to 60 percent the percentage of votes needed for most ballot measures to pass.
Legislators in Missouri will soon vote on measures to increase the number of signatures that a proposed amendment would need to qualify for the ballot, from 8 percent of voters in six of the state’s eight congressional districts to 10-15 percent in all eight districts.
Supporters of Idaho ballot measures would be required to submit signatures representing 6 percent of registered voters in each of the state’s 35 legislative districts to qualify for the ballot, rather than the 18 required under current law.
The push to restrain the right of initiative is bipartisan. In Maine and Massachusetts, Democrats want to put a ceiling on donations to ballot measures.
Legislators in liberal California want to alter how referendums that try to override laws passed by the legislature are presented to voters. Current law requires a voter to vote “no” on a referendum to veto a bill the legislature had passed. After seeing studies that some voters routinely default to voting “no” on ballot questions, Democrats want to flip that, demanding voters affirmatively vote “yes” and choose to veto a challenged bill.
State legislators justify their proposed restrictions by saying our Founding Fathers held that citizens should not directly decide issues but instead should decide who will decide — namely, elected representatives in a deliberative body.
But from the time of the Magna Carta, the right of petition has grown alongside that of representative government, which is why most free nations allow for some form of direct democracy. The linguistic patchwork called Switzerland has governed itself admirably through citizen initiatives for centuries.
In their current incarnation in the U.S., the ideas of representative democracy and the right of petition should be viewed as complementary, not antithetical. Even James Madison, a Founding Father who opposed direct democracy, wrote that since political power rested with ordinary citizens it was appropriate “to recur to the same original authority whenever it may be necessary to enlarge, diminish or newly model the power of government.”
As a Californian, I can attest to the role that citizen initiatives have played in bypassing an arrogant, self-absorbed legislature. Most people have heard about Proposition 13, which became law in 1978 after two decades during which legislators dithered while property taxes soared. It won 65 percent approval even though only four out of 120 state legislators endorsed it. Proposition 13 certainly has its flaws, but it has saved California taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. Its requirement that tax hikes be approved by two-thirds of legislators or voters has forced government to do a better job of justifying its revenue appetites.
Also lost in all the complaints about initiatives is the fact that direct democracy often makes government function more effectively, given that legislative bodies are often gridlocked in our era of hyper-polarization.
Voters also often exercise far more common sense in addressing public issues than they do when they elect legislators.
Last November, California’s very liberal voters rejected watering down the Proposition 13 property-tax cut, spurned an effort to restore racial preferences, turned thumbs down on a move to end cash bail for criminals, opposed allowing local rent control, and rejected a law designed to unionize app-based delivery and ride-sharing drivers.
Notwithstanding brickbats from both left and right, the initiative process remains popular in every state where it exists. Citizens want a final trump card over entrenched incumbents who often feel free to ignore voters.