We The Signature Collectors
For ballot activists, disillusionment is not an option
by Jeff Jacoby

Let us now praise the foot soldiers of direct democracy, the passionate activists who believe that when legislatures prove recalcitrant, We the People have a right to make the laws that We the People wish to live under.

The U.S. Supreme Court's decision this week not to disturb Proposition 209, the California initiative abolishing state preferences based on race or sex, was a victory for the principles of colorblindness. And it was a victory for the majority of California voters who approved the measure last November.
But above all it was a victory for the thousands of volunteers and true believers who poured heart and soul into getting the measure on the ballot in the first place - the men and women who researched precedents and drafted the language, who gave up weekends to collect hundreds of thousands of required signatures, who slogged through every legal and bureaucratic challenge, who dialed phone numbers, raised money, waged a campaign, debated opponents, persuaded voters and made their case to the public over and over and over.

To get a law enacted by popular vote is a remarkable civic achievement. It takes sweat and grit and a strong faith in the wisdom of the electorate. Politician and elitists commonly deride ballot issues as shallow and thoughtless, but the opposite is usually true. A ballot proposal voted into law will almost always have been debated more thoroughly, more openly, and more clearly than any bill cobbled together in the hallways and caucus rooms of a state legislature.

It is inexcusable that the enemies of Prop 209 should have gone to such lengths - all the way up to the Supreme Court! - to try to kill a law the people of California so decisively endorsed. But this is now the rule, at least when liberals are on the losing end of ballot initiatives. First the people decide, then the losers look for judges who will overturn the decision. Democracy, in their view, is a fine thing - when it produces results acceptable to liberals.

To be fair, there are honorable exceptions. When a panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned California's voter-enacted term limits law a few weeks ago, Susan Estrich - the liberal law professor who used to be a top aide to Michael Dukakis - rebuked the judges. "To have federal courts tell the people of a state that we don't know what we're doing when we vote is a affront," she wrote.

It has become an affront so routine that ballot activists now report a new difficulty in collecting signatures: Voters assume that even if they sign, and even if the measure wins approval on Election Day, somebody will find a way to thwart the public's will.

In Massachusetts, Citizens for Limited Taxation and Government - a doughty 20-year veteran of initiative campaign - is struggling to assemble the 65,000 signatures needed to put a modest income-tax cut on the 1998 state ballot. "People say, 'Why bother?'" reports Chip Ford, the group's co-director. "They're only going to throw it out anyway."

But disillusionment is not an option.

If the people of Massachusetts want to tax cut, they'll have to get it themselves. When state legislators hiked the income tax rate from 5 percent to 5.75 percent in 1989- as an emergency measure to deal with the Dukakis fiscal meltdown- they vowed it would revert to the lower rate in 18 months. The 18-month mark came and went; the tax rate never reverted. (Indeed, it stands now at 5.95 percent). Today, Dukakis and his meltdown are gone and the treasury is overflowing, yet the legislature refuses to roll back the tax. So what choice do taxpayers have? They can sign the citizens petition and have at least a shot at a tax cut, or they can turn their backs on the signature gatherers and be guaranteed high rates forever.

Democracy, Winston Churchill famously remarked, is the worst form of government- except for all the others. It is rarely easy to get politician to do the right thing, or to get them out of the way so we can do the right thing. It is understandable when voters, so often abused and condescended to by legislators and judges, want to say it's spinach and say the hell with it.

But disillusionment is not an option. It is dangerous to give up. Besides, sometimes the people actually win a round. California's voters passed Proposition 209 a year ago and - what do you know - Prop 209 is now law in California. It may have taken a trip to the Supreme Court for that to happen, but it also took the passion, backbone, and drive of an army of volunteers who refused to give up every time the going got tough.

Mr. Jacoby is a Boston Globe columnist, distributed by the New York Times News Service.

From the web site of Initiative for Texas, Austin, TX 78741, (512) 447-2086, email: mikeford@quik.com