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IN THE TWO-year political cycle that
culminated on Election Day 2000, some 350 initiative petitions were
submitted to election officials in the 24 states that permit laws to
be passed at the ballot box. Of those 350, only 76 made it onto
the ballot. And of those 76, only 36 were adopted. Of all
the initiatives proposed for the 2000 election, in other words, 90%
ended in failure.
In the same 24 states, meanwhile, more than
10,000 laws were enacted by state legislators. Totals for the 2000
cycle aren't yet available, but according to the Council of State
Governments, lawmakers in the 24 states passed 11,000 laws in the
1998 cycle, and a whopping 17,000 in the two years before that.
It's hard to imagine that anyone could look
at those numbers - 36 laws created by ballot initiative versus 10,000
or more created by state legislatures - and conclude that initiatives
are out of control. But there are such people. Especially
in the state legislatures.
Initiatives are the last resort of desperate
citizens, a way to check the power of remote or arrogant lawmakers.
When politicians refuse to heed the public, when special interests
block reform, when the governor is disdainful, when the courts offer
no relief, voters in 24 states still have some leverage: They can
bypass the Legislature and change the statute-book themselves.
As the numbers make clear, this doesn't
happen very often, but even a little citizen lawmaking seems to drive
politicians crazy. It offends them that ordinary voters have
the chutzpah to demand a say, once in a while, on an issue of public policy.
To stem this plague of democratic
decision-making they have taken to sabotaging it with onerous rules:
They hike the number of signatures needed to qualify a measure for
the ballot.
They ban payments to signature collectors. They require
petition circulators to be registered voters.
They only permit initiatives that deal with a ''single subject'' - a
term then construed to invalidate even narrowly drawn ballot questions.
They demand that signatures be gathered from far-flung corners of the
state - a high barrier in huge but sparsely populated Western states.
If they are completely without shame - if
they are, say, the Massachusetts General Court - they openly flout
the law. In 1992, 75,000 Bay State citizens signed a petition
to put a term-limits amendment on the ballot. Under the state
constitution, the Legislature was required --- not allowed, required
--- to take a vote; if 25 percent of the members backed the measure,
it would have moved to the ballot. But the Legislature,
manipulated by then-Senate President William Bulger, refused to vote,
and the amendment died.
It is bad enough that lawmakers go to such
lengths to undermine the initiative process. Even worse is when they
do so to defend the indefensible.
The Oklahoma Legislature, to take the most
egregios current example, has just approved an amendment doubling the
number of signatures required for any ballot measure involving
animals. The reason for this double standard? To block an
initiative outlawing the grotesque bloodsport of cockfighting.
Incredibly, it is still legal in Oklahoma to attach razors to the
legs of roosters and then goad them into slashing each other while
spectators bet on which one will bleed to death first.
Even more incredibly, Oklahoma 's elected
representatives are willing to erode Oklahoma 's democratic system to
protect this barbaric entertainment.
Travesties like these make it easy to
understand the disesteem in which the average voter holds the average
state legislator. ''Most Americans believe their elected
officials look out first for themselves, then for their contributors,
and put serving the public well down on their list of priorities,''
writes David Broder. ''To tell American voters today that a
politician is better motivated, more civic minded, and a better
custodian of the commonwealth than the voters themselves might be an
insult to their intelligence.''
Nicely balancing the voters' low opinion of
legislators is their high opinion of the initiative process. In
a new Rasmussen poll, 68 percent of respondents nationwide support
the right of citizens to bring proposed laws to the ballot; only 13
percent oppose it. By a similarly lopsided 65-20, they say a
law adopted by the voters is more likely to be in the public interest
than a bill passed by the legislature. And they are under no
illusion about the reason legislators keep finding new way to
regulate ballot questions: It is to preserve their power (67
percent), not to protect the public (16 percent).
Citizen initiatives are good for democracy
and a jewel of self-government. More often than not, they bear
out Holmes's dictum that the best test of truth is the power of an
idea to get itself accepted in the competition of the market. A
ballot measure that wins the electorate's approval is likely to have
been broadly publicized, vigorously debated, carefully analyzed, and
widely discussed. If only the same could be said about all our laws.
Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com.
This story ran on page A18 of the Boston Globe on 6/7/2001 .
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.
A point not made in Jeff Jacoby's column is
that there is hardly a finer education for the electorate than that
which takes place in the debates on statewide ballot propositions ---
not just the ones approved by the voters, but also the ones that
voters reject. M. F. |
