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Exploring direct democracy
By KEVIN FRYLING
Reporter Staff Writer
While polls show that most Americans favor the use of ballot initiatives, voter referendums and recall elections—three institutions which, for the past 100 years, have enabled voters in about half the United States to affect public policies on the state level—a UB political scientist believes that such direct democratic institutions are far from the system of representational government that our nation’s founding fathers had in mind.
The effects of these three voting mechanisms on American politics, as well as speculation about their ultimate impact on the health of the nation, were the subject of a UBThisSummer lecture, “Direct Democracy in America,” presented yesterday by Joshua Dyck.
“We’re talking about citizens influencing public policy with no middleman,” said Dyck assistant professor in the Department of Political Science, College of Arts and Sciences. “The reason why this resonates with a lot people is because they don’t like self-interest in their elected leaders...they don’t trust the government and they view politicians as subverting the public will.”
This “trio” of direct democratic institutions arose from the Progressive movement in U.S. politics, which took place about 100 years ago, Dyck added, noting that most states that have such methods of voting in place are located on the West Coast, as their governments were still being established at the turn of the 20th century—notable exceptions including Massachusetts and Florida. He also pointed out that the difference between ballot initiatives and voter referendums is slight—the first is when the voters themselves draft legislation, the second when legislators push difficult decisions onto voters in order to avoid being responsible for enacting controversial laws—whereas the nature of a recall election is familiar to most as the institution that helped put Arnold Schwarzenegger into office as governor of California in 2003.
In fact, while the use of ballot initiatives is on the rise across the United States, Dyck said California is the state in which they’re the most popular, with an average of 10-15 coming up before voters in each election. Infamously, Schwarzenegger even used them shortly after coming into office in an attempt to push through a number of his administration’s public policies—part of a costly special election in which none of the measures were approved.
Other examples of issues that have come up for public vote in states that use ballot initiatives include cuts in property taxes, term limits, changes to abortion laws, legislation affecting marriage and gay rights, environmental regulation, limits on public spending on illegal immigrants, repeals of affirmative action, harsher sentences for criminal offenders and even the construction of stadiums and rail systems.
“These are all things that have serious implications on state governments, on criminal justice systems, on budgets,” said Dyck.
Although a significant percentage of voters view ballot initiatives as a positive means to cut through the partisan in-fighting that plagues most state legislatures, Dyck also pointed out that citizens shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that most of the problems slowing the passage of legislation in our nation are to a certain degree intentional—that our nation was founded on the principle of “government by gridlock” in order to prevent “mob rule,” or the tyranny of the majority.
In addition, Dyck said research has shown voters frequently are “woefully uninformed when it comes to the details of policy,” noting that voter referendums and ballot initiatives lack the clear party affiliations that serve as effective “short-cuts” for voters who do not keep up on certain issues.
Also, while ballot initiatives on public policies are effective at increasing participation in elections, Dyck said they’re generally only good at boosting numbers among partisan voters—and that Democrats and Republicans both have begun using ballot initiatives on hot-button issues, including referendums on gay marriage and increasing the minimum wage, to prop up voter turnout in mid-term elections.
The difficult requirements involved in getting such initiatives on the ballot, particularly the cost of collecting enough signatures to qualify, also is problematic, he added, explaining that special interests now are employing ballot initiatives to bypass the lobbying process by bringing issues directly before voters.
“Most of the ballot initiatives that are qualified are now written by wealthy entrepreneurs,” Dyck said. “That’s not the transformative effect that people envisioned when they put these laws into place 100 years ago.”