Ballot Initiatives...what's the deal?

Great Debates
1

I was thinking about the subject of citizen-initiative referenda the other day, and a few criticisms occurred to me. These are just conjectures off the top of my head, so all I want to know is if they hold any water, in the opinions & knowledge of the multitude…

1. Wouldn’t they mask the complexity of the issues they purport to address?

What I mean here is this: a referendum necessarily reduces an issue to one side versus another. When a given initiative is proposed, it would seem likely that it would focus debate on an artificially two-sided question, and when it’s struck down, it would seem likely that the attitude would be “Oh, well, that’s the end of that, then,” when a multiplicity of alternatives hasn’t really been considered.

Take for instance the subject of how to deal with people who smoke pot. One proposal would be to keep its possession and trafficking illegal; one would be to legalize it fully; a third would be to decriminalize possession while keeping trafficking illegal; a fourth would be to decriminalize, but not legalize both; and so forth. How does a single proposal relate to this complexity?

2. Wouldn’t they cause severe incoherence with a given state’s legislative agenda?

A state’s legislature has a number of things it wants to accomplish in a given time, but to my knowledge, referenda bypass the legislature entirely. So if, say, a legislature feels the need to spend more money to defend some ailing program but the citizens mandate a tax cut, wouldn’t that be a bit of a difficulty? Or if a state wants to cut taxes but a referendum demands massive increases in state trooper presence, or something, wouldn’t the result be similar?

3. Wouldn’t decisions be made on the basis of severely incomplete information?

I’m thinking here of California’s Proposition 13 in 1977, which, IIRC, prohibited future increases in property taxes and thus severely threatened the state school system’s funding. I imagine the governor and legislature had a much better idea of the importance of property taxes to the state’s education budget than the populace at large did, especially when voters were presented with simply the question on a ballot.

4. In the end, wouldn’t they do more to create an adversarial relationship between government and citizen?

If the legislature and the population are working at cross-purposes, or at least inconsistently, it would seem likely that such a climate would denigrate from the cooperation between legislator and citizen that’s extraordinarily important to a democracy. Instead, you’d have legislatures going one way and the population another, without really trying to get at an effective and reasonable synthesis of ideas.

With all these criticisms in mind, another solution to the problem of integrating public opinion and legislative policy would be the following: If a given petition receives enough signatures, make it mandatory for a legislature to put it on the legislative agenda for the coming session. That is, the proposal can be passed as is, or amended, or rejected depending on the verdict of the legislature. It seems to me that this sort of idea would mean that citizen initiatives would still be addressed more concretely than without any system whatsoever, while accounting for a need for extensive if not complete information and for legislative coherence.

What do you think? Remember: the critique above is based on what I would think likely–sort of a political-theory exercise–rather than on empirical evidence, because I just haven’t bothered yet. If someone has some fact that undermines one or all of these criticisms, please present it. I’m just trying to have a fuller grasp of the issue.

(Oh, and for God’s sake, don’t bother with asking for cites. The nature of the argument above is pretty clear.)

2

1. Wouldn’t they mask the complexity of the issues they purport to address?

2. Wouldn’t they cause severe incoherence with a given state’s legislative agenda?

3. Wouldn’t decisions be made on the basis of severely incomplete information?

4. In the end, wouldn’t they do more to create an adversarial relationship between government and citizen?

#1 How does this differ from the way laws are worded and passed in the legislature?

#2 Most states have quite a few hurdles placed before initiatives (like persuading sufficient people to sign the initiative and then verifying their voter status before it is even presented to the board of elections), so initiatives are never going to be so frequent as to compete directly with the legislature for day-to-day business.

#3 Given that they appear in general elections, each side has several weeks to put forth as much information as it can–or to bury the information in sound bites, of course.

#4 Most initiatives are begun because some group of people already feels alienated from the legislative process. This, at least, lets them see that they have some opportunity to make their voices heard in the creation of law.

3

However, if the legislature is already avoiding the issue, what makes you think that they will not simply kill (or sabotage) the petition as presented?

4

It reduces an issue to a yes or a no on one proposal. In a legislature there’s a fairly significant amount of debate and amendment; amendment isn’t that possible with a referendum.

That wasn’t really what I was getting at; I was more arguing on policy coherence–i.e. that one piece of legislation ought to make sense with respect to another in its content. Quantity isn’t really an issue.

But find me an issue with only two sides.

Ah. This response makes some sense. The problem is that when a government sets a baseline for the number of signatures an initiative requires, it’s essentially saying, “With this amount of support, it’s a significant issue, one worth considering on a ballot.” Wouldn’t it also mean that it’s one worth considering by the duly elected representatives of the populace? Remember, too, that the alienation of which you speak exists without the alternative I suggested.

Now with regard more specifically to your last reply, the government is free to do unpopular things all the time, like picking justices people don’t like. But, less simplistically, I would contend that a government that’s avoiding an issue isn’t necessarily doing so deliberately. With a petition indicating that a significant number of people in a given state want to raise a given issue, its importance would become clear fairly quickly to the legislator. Formalizing the process whereby a group of citizens makes a request of their legislature would mean very damaging consequences for the politician who lets the issue die.

But are there issues wherein the citizen feels like he’s being slighted because the government won’t do anything? If there are, and I think that there are, I still don’t think that justifies bypassing the legislative body of the state.

-Ulterior

5

Some issues are so contentious (like the issue of legalizing or even decriminalizing marijuana), that lawmakers don’t want to touch it with a ten foot poll for fear of alienating themselves from their constituancy. For example, if I were elected by a 51% margin and wanted to keep my office, I sure as hell wouldn’t rock the boat and introduce that legislation, because next time around my opponent might try to demonize me… which could cause me to lose that crucial 2% of the vote I need to be re-elected. On the other hand, if I do NOTHING about the marijuana issue, I’m simply maintaining the status quo, and since EVERY politician pretty much does that, it’s not something that would get me attacked come next election.

Because of some very strong influences out there that keep things the way they are, alternative views get almost no chances of being heard by the legislatures. When was the last time you saw Congress debate whether we should lower the drinking age from 21 (brought upon by Mothers Against Drunk Driving)? or reduce our extremely long copyright terms (Large Corporate Conglomerates)? NEVER. Because the people in favor of the way things are have the most money, and they can BUY Congress to do whatever the hell they want them to. Any voices of dissent will be crushed with an iron fist!!

If a Senator so much as opening his mouth and said “maybe we should rethink our marijuana policy”, DARE would be on his ass during the next election, showing sordid images of kids getting stoned out of their minds… with a caption “This is what Senator So and So wants to make legal… VOTE FOR THE OTHER GUY! FOR GODS SAKE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!”

It’s a sad fact, but a direct vote of the people is sometimes the only way to change things, or even have the issue brought to the public view. With Oregon, they at least let both sides of the initiative have an equal voice in the Voters Pamphlet, which gives the issue more depth than a few stupid soundbites.

6

To be precise, California’s Proposition 13 does not prohibit future property tax increases. What it did was roll back the assessed values of properties owned at the time to a certain date. Then each property’s assessment could only go up at a specified rate, far lower than the actual value of the property.

So if you owned property in 1978 (when Prop 13 passed) your taxes got rolled WAYYYYY back. And today a person owning that property pays far less in taxes than his/her next door neighbor who may have purchased a home in … say … 1996. Once a home is resold, it is reassessed at market value.

However, all properties can only have their assessments raised by a similar amount.

I’ve learned all about this after inheriting my father’s house which would sell for well over $250K or even $300K and we only have to pay $780 in property tax.

7

Initiatives are also discussed in the voter pamphlets in Washington. The “for” and “against” sides each have a long statement and a shorter rebuttal of the other side’s statement.

A couple years ago, the voters of this state passed Initiative 695, which slashed the annual car registration fees to around $30, and also forbade the legislature from raising taxes without the voters’ permission. It was later found unconstitutional (because it combined two separate issues) but we kept the $30 tabs, because our leaders realized how much people wanted them.

In accordance with the OP’s point #4, I-695 did assume an adversarial relationship between the government and citizens from the beginning. The requirement to put tax increases to a public vote was there because the initiative’s authors assumed the legislature would raise other taxes as soon as they lost the car registration revenue.

However, I believe the citizens’ initiative is an important and vital power. It allows the citizens to make their voices heard on specific issues, without regard to party affiliation: you can vote on a single issue without having to buy into a candidate’s entire package.

8

I’m not sure if this is true in other States, but in Ohio, a somewhat lengthy (at least a dozen paragraphs, generally) description has to be written, pro and con, by representatives advocating for and against the issue - so there is at least a little detail on the issue. I’m not sure if this is how other states also do it, I just wanted to chime in with that, given that informing the voter as to what exactly the proposal entails is important.