Referendum vote in the US on key issues

[XT]

Kind of been watching what’s happening in the UK over whether they want to stay or leave the EU and it got me thinking…why don’t we do that here in the US? Seems to me that there are several hot button, key questions we could do this on. The hot one right now (on this board and off) seems to be gun control and banning. Couldn’t we have a vote by all eligible voters on certain key questions regarding gun control, the 2nd Amendment (where it should or shouldn’t be a personal and protected right to keep and bear arms), what an ‘assault weapon’ actually is and whether we should be banning or allowing them, etc etc? Would the boards gun control or anti-gun banning advocates be ok with such a referendum? How about the pro-gun folks?

More generally, why don’t we use this more often in the US? Seems to me that they have used this fairly often in the UK recently, first in Scotland wrt whether they wanted to stay or leave the UK, and now with this EU question. There seems to be some sticky questions we could address through this mechanism here in the US, so wondering why we don’t do this anymore.

[Oakminster]

We don’t do it at the federal level because there is no provision in the Constitution for such a procedure.

[Malden_Capell]

The verdict from the UK is that it hasn’t resolved any issue and has just made everybody angrier.

[mr_wolf]

You mean democracy? Yeah right, dream on!

[Sage_Rat]

@Oakminster

We don’t do it at the federal level because there is no provision in the Constitution for such a procedure.

Hence the failure to create further amendments after the Bill of Rights. Only ten, after all these years!

[PastTense]

California is the U.S. state best known for referendum votes (called propositions). So the question arises how successful has it been there? For example Proposition 13 on taxes has some negative views on this board.

[Whack-a-Mole]

@PastTense

California is the U.S. state best known for referendum votes (called propositions). So the question arises how successful has it been there? For example Proposition 13 on taxes has some negative views on this board.

My understanding is it has not gone well overall.

Prop 13 is a good example of an issue that was hijacked by outside interests. Further I believe the state legislature has had serious problems balancing the books because the people demanded all sorts of things but have voted down tax hikes and the like to pay for it all.

I think a referendum can be a good thing on something like Brexit and perhaps a handful of other big ticket issues but on the whole government is best left to the running of some elected few.

[Little_Nemo]

@Sage_Rat

Hence the failure to create further amendments after the Bill of Rights. Only ten, after all these years!

There’s a procedure in the Constitution for enacting amendments. It doesn’t involve public referendums.

[Sage_Rat]

@Little_Nemo

There’s a procedure in the Constitution for enacting amendments. It doesn’t involve public referendums.

I’ve heard it rumored on this forum, many times, that we live in a democracy. I grant that I disagree with that statement, but it’s what I’ve been told.

If true, then there is no difference.

[Measure_for_Measure]

Q1: Do we want to blow shit up?
A1: Hell yes!
A2: No.

Q2: Should Missouri be kicked out of the US?
A1: Hell yes!
A2: No.

Q3: Should we suspend the 8th amendment to support the fight against ISIS?
A1: Hell yes!
A2: No.

Q4: Is the 2nd Amendment negotiable?
A1: Hell yes!
A2: No.

Q5: Should there be a prohibition on human cloning?
A1: Hell yes!
A2: No.

Q6: Are referendums a great way to resolve complex societal issues, especially when they are penned by lobbyists and created outside of a deliberative process and therefore are poorly written, like they are in California?
A1: Hell yes!
A2: No.

[Lord_Feldon]

@Little_Nemo

There’s a procedure in the Constitution for enacting amendments. It doesn’t involve public referendums.

The option usually used doesn’t, but in many states the convention option is effectively a referendum, in the same way that we effectively elect the president.

[Grumman]

The reason to have a Bill of Rights in the first place is so that a 50%+1 majority is insufficient to overturn the rights of the minority. Denying people their constitutional rights based on the government’s unjustified belief that they are terrorists isn’t just a tool Clinton & Trump want to use to take away people’s guns, it’s also why people spent years being tortured in Guantanamo Bay, and why Anwar and Abdulrahman al-Awlaki were murdered by the US government without trial.

[septimus]

Churchill once said “Democracy is the worst form of government …”
He might have been even less sanguine about Democracy if he were familiar with American voters.

[Stringbean]

Is this the thread where we thrust our noses upwards and castigate the weakling masses for their ineptitude while simultaneously and hypocritically decrying the lack of “true democracy” in our country?

Harumph, I say.

[Stanislaus]

Referendums are not democratic. They are anti-democratic.

Referendums are simplistic. Look at the two recent UK examples: the complex and weighty questions of Scotland’s constitutional relationship to the rest of the UK, or the UK’s constitutional relationship to the EU, reduced to the gross simplifcation of “Y/N?” It’s unlikely in the extreme that either of those two options adequately captures the genuine collective desire of the electorate. But while the actual policy space contains many, many more options (greater Scottish devolution within the UK, for example, or greater restrictions on free movement within the EU while maintaining tax harmonisation) the people are not given the opportunity to make their voice heard.

Referendums are majoritarian. Having simplified the question to the point of absurdity, they hand total control to 50%+1 of the population. Democracy is not mere majoritarianism - where two opposing views are closely supported, the democratic solution is mediate a consensus agreement, not steamroller the narrow majority.

Referendums are inimical to debate. By splitting complex questions into two they draw hard and fast lines even between people who are more in agreement than not. Forcing people to be for or against means that the fundamental democratic principle - that citizens have shared interests - is corroded. No campaigner in a referendum can acknowledge that their are cons to their position and pros to their opponents. Instead they must exaggerate their case and denigrate every aspect of their opponents. This leads to bad information (“£350 million a week on the EU”) as the basis for decisions. And we all know what happens when you put Garbage In.

Referendums divide the voters against themselves. All debate is forced into an artificial dichotomy which leads each “side” to view its opponents as enemies and even traitors. That’s not hyperbole - these are the words being used today in the UK.

Referendums are misleading. As we’ve seen today, the public often don’t answer the question asked. People were asked about the EU but were answering, variously, “Do you feel comfortable with our levels of immigration?”, “Are you happy with the current government?” and “Would you like to send a message to the Establishment?”. These are all worthy questions that should be democratically addressed, but the referendum has prevented people from expressing themselves clearly on them.

Referendums let politicians off the hook. They are elected to deliberate, to analyse policy options and to make informed decisions. Sometimes, these decisions will be difficult or unpopular. Referendums allow them to duck their responsibilities and blame someone else. In turn, this leads people to view politicians, and politics, as trivial and superficial.

Referendums also let the voters off the hook. They have the power, but not the responsibility. They can always say - and some in the UK already are - that they didn’t really understand the import of their decision, or that they didn’t really mean it. There is no accountability.

A working democracy doesn’t just require votes. It requires accountability, it requires deliberation, it requires a willingness to hear the views of others, it requires meaningful debate and it requires that complex and difficult questions are treated as such, and not a popularity contest. Referendums cut at the root of all of these.

[GunnarFranz]

@Measure_for_Measure

Q6: Are referendums a great way to resolve complex societal issues, especially when they are penned by lobbyists and created outside of a deliberative process and therefore are poorly written, like they are in California?
A1: Hell yes!
A2: No.

1,2 (Mississippi is far worse but the us needs to gain as much land as possible not lose it (plzannexcanada), 1,2,2,2

I’m pleased by todays news, next should be the dissolution of the UK (soon,) followed (probably in several decades,) by the EU…

Anyway, I like the idea of a referendum but with the amount of low information humans I have to tolerate, I have a feeling a hastily penned referendum to make taxing citizens illegal would win in resounding fashion. We live in interesting times.

@Stringbean

Is this the thread where we thrust our noses upwards and castigate the weakling masses for their ineptitude while simultaneously and hypocritically decrying the lack of “true democracy” in our country?

Harumph, I say.

It is amazing the US is the world’s sole superpower, based on egalitarianism, when people are so decidedly unequal in the amount of logic they use contemplating the issues of the day… I’ve never liked democracy (as an American,) but I’m beginning to think that as attention spans get shorter it will be our downfall.

[Thudlow_Boink]

@XT

There seems to be some sticky questions we could address through this mechanism here in the US, so wondering why we don’t do this anymore.

Anymore?

Has there ever been anything that all the citizens of the US voted on directly?

[John_Mace]

@Thudlow_Boink

Anymore?

Has there ever been anything that all the citizens of the US voted on directly?

American Idol?

[Measure_for_Measure]

@Stanislaus

Referendums are not democratic. They are anti-democratic.

Referendums are simplistic. Look at the two recent UK examples: the complex and weighty questions of Scotland’s constitutional relationship to the rest of the UK, or the UK’s constitutional relationship to the EU, reduced to the gross simplifcation of “Y/N?” It’s unlikely in the extreme that either of those two options adequately captures the genuine collective desire of the electorate. But while the actual policy space contains many, many more options (greater Scottish devolution within the UK, for example, or greater restrictions on free movement within the EU while maintaining tax harmonisation) the people are not given the opportunity to make their voice heard.

Referendums are majoritarian. Having simplified the question to the point of absurdity, they hand total control to 50%+1 of the population. Democracy is not mere majoritarianism - where two opposing views are closely supported, the democratic solution is mediate a consensus agreement, not steamroller the narrow majority.

Referendums are inimical to debate. By splitting complex questions into two they draw hard and fast lines even between people who are more in agreement than not. Forcing people to be for or against means that the fundamental democratic principle - that citizens have shared interests - is corroded. No campaigner in a referendum can acknowledge that their are cons to their position and pros to their opponents. Instead they must exaggerate their case and denigrate every aspect of their opponents. This leads to bad information (“£350 million a week on the EU”) as the basis for decisions. And we all know what happens when you put Garbage In.

Referendums divide the voters against themselves. All debate is forced into an artificial dichotomy which leads each “side” to view its opponents as enemies and even traitors. That’s not hyperbole - these are the words being used today in the UK.

Referendums are misleading. As we’ve seen today, the public often don’t answer the question asked. People were asked about the EU but were answering, variously, “Do you feel comfortable with our levels of immigration?”, “Are you happy with the current government?” and “Would you like to send a message to the Establishment?”. These are all worthy questions that should be democratically addressed, but the referendum has prevented people from expressing themselves clearly on them.

Referendums let politicians off the hook. They are elected to deliberate, to analyse policy options and to make informed decisions. Sometimes, these decisions will be difficult or unpopular. Referendums allow them to duck their responsibilities and blame someone else. In turn, this leads people to view politicians, and politics, as trivial and superficial.

Referendums also let the voters off the hook. They have the power, but not the responsibility. They can always say - and some in the UK already are - that they didn’t really understand the import of their decision, or that they didn’t really mean it. There is no accountability.

A working democracy doesn’t just require votes. It requires accountability, it requires deliberation, it requires a willingness to hear the views of others, it requires meaningful debate and it requires that complex and difficult questions are treated as such, and not a popularity contest. Referendums cut at the root of all of these.

Yes and +1. Referendums have little to do with deliberative democracy. I understand that Brexit was written exceptionally well, far better than most US referendums for example. Nevertheless anyone with a nuanced position (say, I hate existing EU institutions, but I’m voting to stay so we don’t shoot ourselves in the foot) typically gets their vote interpreted in a simplistic manner by the media after the fact. And pressure for your position dissipates, even if majorities vote with you. Referendum don’t measure prudent preference particularly well.

Yet referendums are popular, because they have the trappings of democracy without the substance. In many US states, we’re stuck with them.

Luckily there’s a simple fix. For the UK, stop holding referendums. For those living in places where that is not an option, adopt the Swiss system. Referendums can be used to pass laws. But they don’t modify constitutions. What that means is that they are subject to legislative updating, just like any other law. In practice it encourages Swiss referendum organizers to deliberate with legislative bodies ahead of time. So the language gets tightened up and more sensible. And the law doesn’t ossify with 40 year old popular opinion and yes even spending mandates baked into the constitution.

[Corry_El]

The US founders could have added a referendum process and didn’t. It would have been most out of character for them to have. The whole idea of the US constitution was to make leaders ultimately accountable to the people (only some of the people at first, but still) but not have the momentary passions of the people rule. That general concept and phraseology appears again and again in the public explanations of the document at the time (Federalist Papers). IMO it’s stood the test of the time.

Relatively newer US states, in the western part of the country, more often have a referendum process. At the time they wrote their constitutions a couple or more generations later there was something more like the modern view ‘the more directly democratic the better’. But IMO the record of the referendum process in US states, not only CA though most notoriously that state, is very mixed at best. It’s a poor argument for extending the concept to the national level in US conditions.

As for our friends the Brits, this vote of theirs was not a legally binding referendum. It was ad hoc and IMO a basically stupid idea, the vote and outcome both, though obviously it’s their right to do as they please with their country. The kind of discontent that runs throughout the rich world due to slower rising incomes and dislocations due to technology, globalization, immigration etc. is not going to solved by moves like the Brexit. Those kind of political causes just gain momentum as people project their problems, which they don’t really understand, onto to something simple. I don’t think Brexit will be a catastrophe for England (which is really the entity which voted to leave, NI didn’t, Wales did but those two are too dependent on England to do anything but follow her, Scotland OTOH voted to stay and is viable independent country, if barely, and is now more likely to become one, back in the EU). Probably England will be in worse shape 10 yrs from now because of the Brexit, but mainly the level of discontent will be similar if the global trends actually causing it haven’t changed. The EU didn’t cause it.