I think this is my biggest take away from the fiasco of the Brexit referendum. It boils down larger questions and takes away any nuance in a straight yes or no vote (and I have no idea why you would make such a huge change a straight up 50/50 proposition anyway 
).
Yeah, Stanislaus excellent post covered almost everything I’d want to say.
In our system of government, I don’t feel there is any place for a referendum on issues like this. For example if we were to join some transnational entity like the EU, I can see two mechanisms by which it would be possible–a treaty, which could work as long as it didn’t violate the constitution, or constitutional amendment(s) if membership in such a transnational organization required them.
For the treaty approach, that would mean our President and his State Department would have to have a long negotiation to produce the treaty, and agree to it. Then it would be sent to the Senate, which would ratify it with a 2/3rds majority vote. [Things that are considered treaties under international law don’t map 1:1 to treaties under the U.S. constitution, a lot of treaties we enter are “executive agreements” entered into solely by the President, or executive-congressional agreements, where the President agrees to something and both houses of congress approve.] In the case of a transnational body membership, I suspect the President would follow the most traditional treaty process in which he submits it to 2/3rds approval of the Senate.
That in itself represents a big thing, it means that effectively 2/3rds of the State’s representation in the upper house have agreed to something, representing almost certainly a super majority of the country’s actual population.
From there, (and much of this is why entering treaties with the United States is a bear, and causes lots of conflicts with international law), Congress would still have to pass “executing legislation” if the treaty itself didn’t contain text that made it self executive. That subjects it to another series of votes representing most likely more than half of the country’s population.
That’s the easiest path in which we could get involved in a transnational body like the EU. But the reality is, one in the form of the EU would actually intersect with significant U.S. constitutional issues, and likely our full membership would require a constitutional amendment. This would then subject it to being approved by the legislatures of 38 states and 2/3rds of each House. Reversing it would be difficult as well.
The people are extremely well represented throughout this process, in my opinion–far better than they are in a referendum.
I actually think America’s Federalism serves it well in examples like this, while many anti-Federalists mock the “power we give to land” (i.e. meaning political entities regardless of the number of people in them) actually requires that a large “chunk” of our constituent parts agree to something before it can happen. The British system where England has a population of 50m, Scotland one of 5m, Wales 3m, and Northern Ireland a little under 2m, a referendum is essentially an English vote. That’s fine if all you care about is direct democracy, but in the United States we recognized that for matters of grave importance, our union of previously fully sovereign states must require some “buy in” from a good chunk of those states to maintain the integrity of our union.
The United Kingdom arguably was more in need of that than the United States. Scotland, Wales and Ireland have unique ethnocultural identities, very different from the U.S. states which have always been a decent mix all throughout. The early colonies were predominantly of English origin, immigration and the importation of vast numbers of slaves to the Southern colonies gives some regions a different demographic makeup now (more Hispanics in the Southwest, more blacks in the Southeast, more non-English European immigrants throughout the greater Midwest and Mid-Atlantic in varying numbers etc), but there is nothing akin to the British Isles level of cultural distinctness and identity. On top of all that, Scotland in particular had a 700 year or so history of being an independent Kingdom with its own Parliament and etc, in 1707 when the countries were unified (they had been under a unified monarch before that but were not a unified country) they actually abolished the Scottish Parliament and just gave Scots seats in Westminster. While it’s been over 300 years now since that happened, and while Westminster has in recent times created a devolved parliament for Scotland and other constituent parts of the United Kingdom, the reality is 300 years of not having a “level” of equal say to the primary country in the union I think has caused tremendous problems.
Scotland shouldn’t have equal say in all things, just like Rhode Island gets less say in the House, in Presidential elections and etc than California. But for important matters of constitutional importance, Rhode Island and California are equals, and while this has negatives, I think the major positive is it has created a stronger union than that which the British cooked up in 1707.
Please don’t bring that crap to the U.S. - referendums are hellish to live through, no matter what the outcome. They are blunt-instrument tools which provide undue influence to the most hot-headed and impulsive voters (who decides what a “key issue” is anyway?), and they do a great job of tearing families and communities apart.
Referenda have already made California practically ungovernable.
See “people are idiots and not to be trusted.” Also “people are easily duped”
IF you had referendums, you’d need a good system of checks and balances to make sure that you created long term sustainable policy while balancing short term needs.
Treaties are also subject to court review (at least probably - the law’s a little gray on this issue). A treaty can theoretically be overturned as unconstitutional.
Treaties also can be overturned by subsequent congressional legislation–even if doing so violates international law.
One problem with referendums i that public opinion can be subject to massive mood swings. Shortly after 9/11, for instance, a referendum on “Should we eject Arab Muslims from America” might have actually gotten 51% support.
Of course, future electorates might, when things have calmed down, overturn the previous decision, but the damage would have been done.
It’s fashionable to malign the American Founding Fathers–but this sort of “transient, dangerous faction” was precisely why they put so many road blocks in our form of government.
As Stanislaus and others have remarked, direct democracy is not the only possible or valid form of democracy there is. Representative democracy is just as valid and arguably preferable for most of the tasks of actual governance.
When people complain that, say, the US political system “isn’t democratic enough”, they mean that it isn’t representative enough, not that it isn’t direct enough.
No it isn’t. What’s fashionable is to venerate, worship, mythoolize, and deify them. Critics of originalism do not malign them but rather recognize thatthey weren’t necessarily right about everything and their ideas shouldn’t be treated as if written in stone.
Back in 1999 Missouri voted on Proposition B, a law that would require local law enforcement to issue concealed weapon permits. The proposal was defeated when St. Louis and Kansas City voters heavily rejected it, although it had support in less urban areas.
In 2003 the legislature passed exactly the same law, and then overturned the governor’s veto.
Which leads to a question voters ask around here all the time, “When does NO really mean NO?” If voters reject a tax increase, does that mean it should never go on the ballot again?
I think this is the system. It only takes one Yes, for Yes to be Yes. A hundred Noes don’t mean a thing if the 101st outcome is Yes.
I think the same phenomenon is true in other political arenas as well. Isn’t it true that gay marriage only needed to pass SCOTUS once (Obergefell v. Hodges) to win? It could have been rejected 100 times but if it succeeded on the 101st try, then it would be the law of the land?
I don’t see the problem with the MO legislature passing a constitutional law no matter if there’d been a similar referendum or not. A legislature itself can fail to pass a law in 1999 then pass the same one in 2003. So what’s the problem with one outcome from referendum in 1999 and different one from a legislature in 2003? I see the example as another reason why referendums are a bad idea and the states which have them should junk them; they certainly shouldn’t be adopted on US federal level. They needlessly erode the legitimacy of the legislature’s actions in cases like this, and you can run a state with a legislature and no referendums, but not the other way around.
“What do we want?”
“To endlessly procrastinate, defer responsibility, and kick the can down the road a few miles!”
“When do we want it?”
“NOW!”
And yet we’ve grown to be the 5th largest economy in the word. Perhaps being “ungovernable” isn’t so bad!
Is that because of or in spite of? Maybe things could be much, much better. And maybe there wouldn’t be chronic budget shortfalls without it. In any case, this is a non sequitur.
I don’t know shit about shit, and I have better things to do than learn the ins and outs of every issue. That’s why I’ve hired people to do all that reading on my behalf, and use what they’ve learned to make policy.
It doesn’t always work out, but that’s a problem of implementation.