Let the People Speak: Rethinking the Initiative Process

...With a mobile core of workers who go wherever they’re needed, and where the size of their paychecks depends upon on the number of signatures they gather, fraud and deceit are common, while identifying and prosecuting offenders becomes increasingly difficult, since they move on before the ink is fully dry...

...Partly, perhaps, that’s because the last was the only one they could understand, but mostly, polls suggest, because of voter disgust with lawmakers who keep asking them to vote on matters that properly belong to the legislature...

...Proposition 13, for example, which cut taxes— ends up costing its beneficiaries the public services they want and need: funding for a public school system that, since 1978, has fallen from one of the best in the nation to close to the worst...

...In this world, we have senators like Max Baucus—a pivotal figure in President Barack Obama’s effort to reform health care in America—who have been bought and hogtied by the very insurance and pharmaceutical industries that such reform would of necessity constrain...

...But whatever the rules, what started out as a good idea fell victim to the law of unintended consequences...

...Surely it’s not irrelevant that since the fielding of initiatives has become professionalized, the average number of state ballot proposals in the nation has nearly tripled—from twenty-two in the 1970s to sixty-two in the 2000s—making them increasingly important in the development of policy at the local, state, and national levels...

...It’s tempting...

...But it’s not “either-or,” it’s “bothand...

...Even a casual look at the amount of money that pours into the campaign coffers of our legislators— money that, at the very least, assures the wealthy and powerful a sympathetic hearing for their cause—suggests that the legislative process is as likely to be for sale as it is to be deliberative...

...It may be that at the beginning, when America was a smaller, less diverse nation, and the big, easily identifiable corporations (like the Southern Pacific Railroad in California, which virtually controlled the state’s legislature and its courts) were the clearly defined enemy of the people’s will, initiatives did offer the possibility for a more genuine democracy...

...health care for children...

...Talk about a virus...

...Greed, corruption, stupidity, incompetence, the culture wars, virulent partisanship, legislative indifference to the collective good—all these contribute their share...

...From its beginning, the impulse behind the initiative movement—whereby citizen-led proposals for legislation and/or constitutional amendments are put on the ballot for voter approval—was to create a way for ordinary citizens to gain the political power necessary to counteract the increasing dominance of big business and its government supporters...

...For whatever “direct democracy” meant a couple of centuries ago, it is now neither “direct” nor “democratic” nor functional politically...

...That, however, doesn’t mean that the advocates for legislative supremacy are right...

...Only after all that would the revised document come before the voters, where a majority could bring it to life or let it die...

...Not surprisingly, California is the clear leader in the use of initiatives at the local level...

...Without much notice, then, the intended purpose of the initiative movement—to give the people a direct voice in framing legislation— turned into a tool for any special interest with enough money and resources to buy its way onto the ballot and sell its cause to an often misinformed, disinformed, and overwhelmed voting public...

...It’s an unsatisfying conclusion, I know, since no such great American awakening is on the horizon—not even, unfortunately, under the leadership of our charismatic new president, who swept into office on the promise of fundamental change in the government he now heads...

...For some, the process is direct: a citizen-initiated proposition need only gather enough valid signatures to appear on the ballot...

...Skeptics charge that initiatives circumvent the more deliberative legislative process and too often allow well-organized and well-funded special interests to inflame the passions of an uninformed and irresponsible electorate...

...It wasn’t long before America’s entrepreneurial spirit came to the fore...

...Disallowing paid signature gatherers, increasing the number of signatures required to field an initiative, limiting contributions in initiative campaigns—all these can and will be circumvented as easily as the nation’s electoral campaign contribution laws have been breached...

...This means that out of a population of more than thirty-six million in 2008, it took only 694,354 signatures to qualify Proposition 8—which overturned the state supreme court’s ruling legalizing same-sex marriage—for the ballot...

...the problem is that the state of democracy is deplorable”—a sentiment with which, despite the recent historic presidential election, I agree—then the problem will not be resolved by small fixes that tinker around the edges of either the initiative or the legislative processes...

...Remember Florida’s butterfly ballots in the 2000 presidential election that gave us George W. Bush...

...And speak they did, whether in the lateseventeenthcentury Salem witch hunts inspired by Puritan theology or in 1773, when the Boston Tea Party signaled the popular discontent with British rule that led to the American Revolution...

...In the November 4, 2008, election alone, the city’s voters were asked to weigh in on twenty-two separate ballot measures, and the state fielded twelve more—which makes casting a vote on Election Day a daunting project, as voters scratch their heads in bewilderment over how to vote (and why they should have to) on such issues as the renaming of a water treatment plant (San Francisco) or new standards for housing chickens and pigs and something called “the renewal energy portfolio” (California...

...True, it isn’t often that a single person will try to buy hundreds of thousands of votes just to keep his backyard smelling sweet, but it’s an example of how easy it is for the wealthy and powerful to commandeer the initiative process, not just in Colorado but all across the land...

...True, then it was the construction of the ballot itself that made it possible for people who thought they were voting for Al Gore to actually cast their ballots for Pat Buchanan...

...Reflecting on this reality, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center, noted, “None of this bodes well for the future...

...Richard Ellis, in his book Democratic Delusions: The Initiative Process in America, recounts the tale of a conservative Colorado billionaire who, when a hog farm opened for business next to his ranch, financed an initiative to regulate hog farms in the state...

...So much so that some observers call it the fourth branch of government and others worry, as Peter Schrag has written in the American Prospect, that “the initiative...

...Although today twenty-four states and the District of Columbia allow popular initiatives, six states—Oregon, California, Colorado, North Dakota, Arizona, and Washington—account for 60 percent of ballot initiatives nationwide, with Oregon and California in a close contest for first place...

...True, the federal government does not allow for popular initiatives...

...Clearly, the system is broken...

...Advocates of the initiative process argue that it’s the only real forum where people can participate directly in the making of public policy, that it operates as a safety valve for political discontent, and that it forces public officials to heed the people’s voice as they shape their agenda...

...In our own time, the diversity of our people, the growth of identity politics, and the social and political philosophies that divide us make it very hard to argue that there is a single “voice of the people...

...And, indeed, in the special election on May 19, 2009, which featured six state propositions— five supposedly designed to ease the state’s fiscal crisis, but which were so convoluted as to be nearly incomprehensible to even the most informed voter, and one that called for withholding legislators’ salary increases in years when the state runs a deficit—only the pay freeze met with voter approval...

...Perhaps in an ideal world we could count on the careful deliberation of our legislative bodies, on an informed citizenry whose diverse groups could rise above their own special interests, on an electoral process that’s free of the influence of the rich and the powerful...

...a conversation that, on a broader level, examines our focus on the private and the individual at the expense of the public, the community, and the collective good—only such a public conversation will lead us closer to that more perfect democratic union we all say we seek but which too few have been willing to enable...

...Oregon passed its first initiative in 1904, and California voters enshrined the process in the state’s Constitution in 1911...

...Thanks to the endless ballot-initiative system, in the four years that I've been here, I've voted on all kinds of stuff I have absolutely no understanding of . . . . It turns out that letting me vote on stuff is a bad idea, for much the same reason that giving me a credit card was a bad idea: I love stuff and hate paying for it...

...None, however, mandated the draconian restrictions that enshrined Proposition 13 into the California Constitution...

...So, for example, in 1978, California, a state with the fifth-largest economy in the world and home to one in eight Americans, passed Proposition 13, a much publicized, nationally watched ballot initiative that (1) cut property taxes from a fixed rate of 2.5 percent of market value to 1 percent, (2) limits the assessed value of a property to a maximum increase of 2 percent a year so long as it is held by its original owner, and (3) requires a two-thirds majority of both houses of the legislature to raise taxes and pass a state budget...

...Lillian B. Rubin is with the Institute for the Study of Social Change, University of California, Berkeley...

...COMMENTS AND OPINIONS Let the People Speak Rethinking the Initiative Process LILLIAN B. RUBIN Let the people speak...

...A number that’s breathtakingly low, and well below the requirements in any other state...

...It’s the same for amending a state’s constitution: some make it easier, some harder...

...If, as social philosopher Richard Lichtman said to me in a recent conversation, “The initiative process is inseparable from democracy...

...The uncomfortable truth in this era of American politics is that we now have the worst of both worlds...

...But it’s not unusual for an initiative undertaken in one state to spread like a pandemic to others—a message federal legislators surely hear...

...The initiative process has been hijacked by the wealthy and powerful it once sought to contain, and the extraordinary cost of running a political campaign leaves those who seek public office dependent for their survival on the open checkbooks of those same forces...

...Whether conservative or liberal, populist or statist—all have turned to initiatives to make their voices heard, and, increasingly, the “people” have spoken on a range of political and social issues: tax reform, term limits, state budgets, affirmative action, education reform, gambling, sentencing laws, prison reform, same-sex marriage, immigration, abortion, drug policy, the environment, and much more...

...No easy task when it takes two-thirds of both houses of the legislature just to put an initiative calling for such a convention on the ballot, and then a majority of the voters to actually convene it...

...For each has some truth on its side, and each is also patently false...

...Money and power trumped populist hope, and a new industry was born...

...Although discussions about initiatives focus on statewide propositions, major policy issues are decided by ballot measures—sometimes citizen-initiated, sometimes proposed by government—in American cities as well...

...we vote all the time, on everything...

...Once the fielding of an initiative became a business, the grassroots volunteers who earlier had collected the requisite signatures were replaced by paid workers hired by companies that eagerly offered their services to anyone with a cause...

...Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, what our legislators are doing and why we pay them...

...In my home state of California, where fiscal issues affecting the economic health of the state and social issues impacting personal lives are often settled by constitutional amendment, the process requires either a two-thirds vote in the state legislature or signatures equal to 8 percent of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election...

...Within the next two years, a “tax revolt,” which has been credited with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and the start of a revitalized conservative movement, saw forty-three states impose their own limits on property taxes and fifteen others cut their income tax...

...Trying to figure out what that sentence means...

...True, not all of the problem lies with these measures...

...Between 1900 and 2000, over 730 local initiatives were circulated for signatures, with the city and county of San Francisco well out in front with fifty-four...

...Words enshrined in American political life since we were but a collection of colonies and the issues of the day were aired and decided at the Town Hall Meetings that defined the political culture of the time...

...It’s ironic, isn’t it, that the citizen-inspired initiative, which was born of the wish to weaken the power of special interests, has, in modern times, served to advantage them...

...safe roads and bridges, adult education, including English as a second language and high-school equivalency programs, and more...

...And depending upon our point of view, we either celebrate the outcome or mourn it...

...Indeed, with little or no control of signature-gathering and no limits on contributions for initiative campaigns, the question becomes this: Just who is doing the speaking...

...As Joel Stein, a recent transplant to California, wrote in Time magazine after the special election in May, “Once I got to Los Angeles, I learned that the East Coast version of democracy is weak...

...Even those initiatives that, on the surface, seem to be in the larger public interest often are not...

...By now, media advisers, advertising agencies, political consultants, lawyers, and petition-gathering firms have become part of an exploding industry dedicated to the developing, packaging, marketing, and selling of an initiative...

...How can we ensure that the people’s voice is unblemished by the manipulations of the rich and powerful...

...One reader, a respected critic who saw this article before its publication, responded to my concluding remarks here by urging on me the very “both-and” position I favor in the debate between the advocates for initiatives and the skeptics...

...But who decides when a referendum is necessary...

...But that changed as the nation grew, the population became more varied and complex, and new ideas about democracy, diversity, and equality emerged to become an integral part of the political discourse...

...Just so, the corruption of the legislative process will continue so long as the Supreme Court continues to erode what’s left of campaign finance reform with rulings that hold that the special-interest money spent in political campaigns is speech that cannot be abridged...

...And there are a lot of people just like me...

...Instead, what we have may be best described as an array of different voices that can and do meld together at a particular historical moment to form a relatively coherent majority voice...

...Imagine what it’s like for a voter...

...Never mind what the real intention is behind a ballot proposal, it’s how it’s presented that counts...

...But in this world, we need only look at legislatures in California, New York, and Washington—to name the three most obvious present-day examples—to see just how far they have strayed from a deliberative process...

...In L.A...

...It soothes the spirit to believe there’s a solution we can implement with relative ease...

...But it’s no different with initiatives, which often are deliberately written, labeled, and described so confusingly that many people have no idea that they voted no on a measure they meant to support...

...Between the complicated and obscure legal language of a proposition, the noise, the spin, and yes, the deceit that often surrounds its promotion—especially when it’s on one of the hot social or political issues—it’s something close to a fantasy to believe that an informed electorate has spoken...

...But there’s no denying that the initiative process, which had its modern incarnation in 1978 with Proposition 13—and is itself an abused tool of partisan struggles—bears a large share of the blame...

...Not surprisingly, the movement took hold in the West, where new or relatively young states had not yet developed the strong, wellentrenched political parties and their urban machines that blocked such reform in the East and South...

...But it wasn’t until 1898 in South Dakota that, in response to popular unrest, voters had the opportunity to test that power and passed the first statewide popular initiative in the nation— an amendment to the state’s Constitution that, by a vote of 23,816 to 16,483, codified the initiative process into law...

...The rules for getting an initiative before the voters vary by state and locality...

...Spending hundreds of millions of dollars on campaigns that systematically disinform the public can only make the task of governing harder...

...It’s not unusual, therefore, to find an initiative where voting yes means no, while there may be an opposing measure right next to it where voting no means yes...

...Such a conclusion, he writes, would “suggest that legislative deliberation is better than the popular referendum as the normal form of democratic governance,” and at the same time would support the “referendum as a kind of opening for citizen insurrections, when these are necessary”—providing, of course, that “the insurrections should not be instigated and manipulated by the rich and powerful...

...has not just been integrated into the regular governmental political system, but has begun to replace it...

...She is a sociologist, psychologist, and author of numerous books, the latest of which is 60 on Up: The Truth about Aging in America (Beacon Press, 2007...

...California, often a bellwether state, is threatened with bankruptcy, hamstrung by initiatives that are embedded in its Constitution...

...Given the diversity in the nation, it’s no surprise that initiatives have served different groups and ideologies...

...Without a national movement to change the structure and culture of American politics, talk of patching up the initiative process is whistling in the wind...

...Only a serious conversation about the meaning of democracy in our fractious and increasingly diverse nation—a conversation that confronts the costs and realities of an uninformed and disinformed voting public, one that challenges our current election practices that have made money so vital to a candidate’s hopes...

...mental health services...

...For others, there’s a step in between: the proposed initiative must be submitted for legislative review, during which the legislature can either adopt it or place it before the voters, with or without modification...

...As the crisis in California grows, some have begun to call for a Constitutional Convention that would revise the state’s Constitution, which has suffered over 500 amendments and/or revisions in the last century...