For commentary see below.
"Direct democracy," the name often given to the various Progressive era "reforms" like initiative, recall, and referenda, is very revealing. Pure democracy is usually portrayed, in the classroom and the newsroom, as an unalloyed good. That it is not what this nation is basically about is seldom mentioned. And republican government 1 - which IS what this country is about - goes similarly unmentioned in both of those locales. One of the consequences of this is that direct democracy has become a significant threat to the nation. In a book on its dangers, David Broder wrote, "At the start of a new century ... a new form of government is spreading in the United States. It is alien to the spirit of the Constitution and its careful system of checks and balances ... [T]his method of lawmaking has become the favored tool of millionaires and interest groups that use their wealth to achieve their own policy goals2 ... Exploiting the public's disdain for politics and distrust of politicians, it is now the most uncontrolled and unexamined area of power politics.3 It has given the United States something that seems unthinkable - not a government of laws but laws without government." Broder's book underestimates the role of public disdain in fueling direct democracy, but otherwise he's dead on.
Thus we've seen California voters using ballot measures to mandate costly public improvements - and to slash the government revenues needed to pay for those improvements. Here in Nevada the "Education First" group is circulating an initiative petition, which would cut education funding by forcing state legislators to fund schools before knowing state revenue projections.4 The state teachers association, instead of simply opposing and trying to defeat the measure, has instead proposed its own initiative petition requiring that state schools be funded at the national average.
But even those measures do not compare to a referendum petition now being circulated. (An initiative petition proposes new law. A referendum puts an existing law on the ballot for voter approval or disapproval.) This measure would put Senate Bill 8 of the 2003 Nevada Legislature on the ballot for a public vote. S.B. 8 is the basic tax and school funding bill approved by the Legislature. Because it contains the tax reforms and increases, its opponents hope to put it on the ballot so those tax changes will be repealed.
But they seem not to realize that this is not all it would do, or perhaps they are assuming they can't lose in the election. But suppose they do lose. In Nevada, once the voters approve a statute, that statute can never again be changed without another public vote. The statute is locked in.5
For instance, Nevada's abortion law was approved in a 1990 referendum. As a result, it can never again be changed without voter approval. It's locked in, beyond the reach of state legislators.
And S.B. 8 is full of statute changes. I went through it as carefully as I could and found 71 changes in statutes. That does not include various other changes that are too complicated to mention here, nor does it include the dozens of statutes that would be repealed if S.B. 8 were approved. Seventy-one changes, approved in a referendum, would put Nevadans deep into micromanaging6 their government every two years. Every time one of those 71 statutes needs to be changed in the future, the public would have to vote on it.7
And these are not statutes dealing with beekeeping, either.8 They are statutes that are regularly re-examined and frequently changed by the Legislature to keep up with changing times. They deal with banking, education, insurance, business trusts, and other frequently revisited topics. If the referendum were approved, the likelihood is that, because the state's economy cannot always wait for the next election, Nevada would have to start having regular special elections after every legislative session for votes on changes in Nevada law. Imagine biennial elections on Nevada Revised Statutes 694c.450, 353.2754, and the other 69 laws involved in this exercise. There would be primary and general elections in even numbered years and permanent special elections in odd numbered years. Imagine the sample ballots that would arrive in state mailboxes, since each of these changes in mortgage broker law or whatever law was at issue would have to be explained and accompanied by arguments for and against their passage.
And since the Distributive School Fund is in the bill, Nevadans would also become a big state school board, voting on every supplemental appropriation to Esmeralda County for kindergarten costs.
Oh, by all means, let's put S.B. 8 up for a public vote. Since we seem not to trust our legislators, it could give us a real taste of direct democracy, of running the government for ourselves. That'll show them.
(Ref: e1002)One contributor writes :
There are a number of important observations here and they are all presumably accurate. However, the view that they are inherently dangerous is based on the structures within this so-called direct democracy is operating in parts of the US today. The checks and balances which are in place to make today's government safer are not appropriate to direct democracy of this kind. But that is not to say the system cannot be designed with the right checks and balances in place. To address the issues one at a time with just one possible approach :
All the problems noted in this article are valid, but only because we have not taken the trouble thus far to prevent them arising. I see no fundamental reason why they cannot all be overcome. Given the will to do so. Therein lies the rub?
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