Freedom House recently published its annual annual comparative assessment of the state of political rights and civil liberties in countries around the world (2002 Freedom Survey ).
Reading the survey got me thinking about the relative freedom (or degree of representative democracy) of the 50 United States. Is anyone aware of a comparison of the states using such measures as ability of the people to place referanda on ballots independent of the legislature (CA and many others), legislative districts determined by an independent, non-partisan agency (IA), severe restrictions on third party candidates qualifying for Congressional districts (GA), electoral votes apportioned based on the popular vote (NE and ME)?
I realize my measures may be biased and I would welcome suggestions for others.
Um, not to be a dick or anything, but I find your question baffling. All the 50 states have the same amount of “freedom” as the others. You’re asking, “Which state is the most repressive as regards the individual’s rights?” The answer is, “None. They’re all the same.”
Granted, there are minor differences in things like drinking ages and motorcycle helmet laws, but where the body politic is concerned–voting and individual rights and things like that–they’re all the same.
Generally speaking, the individual has the same right to put referendums on the ballot in New York as he does in California. The Georgia “ballot restrictions for third-party candidates” that you’re evidently referring to are nothing unusual, or particularly repressive–many other states require third-party candidates to have a certain number of valid signatures on their nominating petitions.
And whether legislative districts are determined by a non-partisan agency, or whether electoral votes are apportioned based on the popular vote doesn’t have anything to do with individual “freedom”. Those things don’t affect how much “freedom” a person has. States that have their legislative districts apportioned by a non-partisan agency aren’t any more or less repressive than other states.
If a citizen of Iowa or Nebraska doesn’t like the way things are being done in his state, he has the same freedom as any other states to get off the couch and try to change the situation.
So I don’t see what you’re getting at. All I can figure is that you’re not American and have gotten hold of an odd idea of the way the system works, that the states have more freedom to make their own, possibly repressive laws than they really do.
Either that, or you’re a Libertarian trying to start a discussion, in which case you’re in the wrong forum.
This is a joint report by the Fraser Institute in Canada, and the National Center for Policy Analysis in the U.S. It ranks all the states and provinces on measures like economic freedom.
From it, I learn that my own province of Alberta is doing pretty well, ranked 29th out of all states and provinces. Every other Canadian province is at the bottom of the list.
According the report, Delaware was the most economically free state in the Union. The least free was a tie between Montana and West Virginia.
Sorry for the confusion. I may have misled readers by referring to the Freedom Survey. As I mentioned, that was just a jumping-off point to my real interest – the relative ranking of democratic mechanisms in each US state.
I’m not trying to rate the freedom of individual US citizens, I agree that all are equal, but rather, I am positing that over 200 years, the laws related to the electoral and legislative processes of the individual states have diverged and created differences between those states. Those differences usually arise due to the desire to protect the incumbent, a specific political party (or parties), or special interests.
Those differences can be measured to create a ranking of states.
For example, in Georgia, the candidates on the ballot are listed based on the following rule: candidates of the same party as the current governor are always listed first. Since Georgia’s governor was always a Democrat since Reconstruction (until 2002), the Democratic Party candidates were always listed first. Some voters will simply choose the first candidate listed, giving an advantage to those candidates.
In my ranking of states, I would take points off away Georgia and give points to states where candidate ballot position was determined randomly. Similarly, why does the incumbent need to be identified as such on the ballot?
In Georgia, the people cannot place a referendum on the ballot, only the legislature can do so. I would once again take points away from Georgia and give points to California.
In Georgia, third party candidates for the US House of Representatives face extreme restrictions
Consequently, no minor party candidate for U.S. House has been able to get on the ballot in Georgia since 1943.
As you might guess, I would rate Georgia quite low on my hypothetical ranking.
As a Californian, I find it somewhat humorous that someone thinks that the use of the initiative, referendum, and recall makes the state of California more “democratic”.
While those were tools adopted by the Progressives in the 1910s in order to supposedly loosen the grip that the railroads had on the state legislature, the initiative now is pretty much in the hands of special interests again. It is quite expensive to mount a campaign to get all the signatures (one initiative circulating now requires over 670,000 registered voters to sign it).
If you think that you and your friends can hang outside Target and get enough signatures to get your pet project on the ballot, more power to you. And don’t forget that you will also have to spend a lot of money to run the campaign.
Recalls are almost all the same way. The only successful ones are for municipal offices because it’s not hard to mobilize a siginificant bloc of voters when people are upset about something that is happening in their backyard. But I don’t believe there has ever been a successful statewide recall in California. I don’t even know if one has made it to the ballot. (Four legislators have faced recall elections, but that only requires action at the local level.)
I have to disagree with DDG on this issue. While it’s true that the difference between states is minor in comparison to the difference between nations, it does exist in measurable quantities. I suppose you could measure things like the percentage of citizens that are eligible to vote and the percentage of eligible voters that are actually registered. You could also rate the difficulty for candidates getting on the ballot (my home state of New York is one of the worst in this regard).
Which supports my point – without regular maintenance, any process will become rusty.
Isn’t any referandum a tool of “special interests”? By bypassing the legislature, who for political survival may be reluctant to consider a measure, a group of citizens, aka “a special interest”, can propose a ballot measure for all citizens to consider.
I’m not suggesting that all laws should be decided by public referendum, but that a state where that is at least possible is in less danger of governmental calcification than a state where the legislature+executive is the only law-making channel.
I’m sure that a resident of Florida who had been convicted of a felony may feel his/her freedom is more restricted than a resident of Vermont (where inmates can vote).
I suppose that’s why California’s initiatives have been about topics such as banning homosexual marriages, making English the official language of the state, increasing taxes on cigarettes, decreasing property taxes, restricting benefits paid to children of illegal immigrants, outlawing busing for the purposes of school integration, etc.
It’s quite a mixed bag that the “people” have come up with in California and there has been enough to tick off both the left and the right.
As for the referendum, which allows the voters to review a piece of legislation passed into law, it is rarely used in California now.
