Citizens in Charge

When calling for restrictions on the voter initiative process, initiative opponents often pull out the tired old argument that citizen initiatives lack the amount of deliberation and consideration that is said to accompany the traditional legislative process. Because they have committee hearings, legislators make better laws - or so the story goes. These arguments of course have to ignore the parallels between the making of law and of sausage: after all, legislative politics is dominated - almost defined - by partisan politicking, logrolling, lobbyists, pay-to-play, and the not-too-occasional sex scandal. As a result, few serious reforms or major policy shifts come from legislatures.

Responding to an Arizona lawmaker who tried unsuccessfully in 2010 to gut several voter-approved initiatives, leading initiative scholar Dr. John Matsusaka  of the Initiative & Referendum Institute points out several flaws in the logic of initiative rights opponents. You can read an excerpt from Explorer News below.

“It’s not direct democracy versus representative democracy,” said John Matsusaka, a professor of law and business at the University of Southern California. “It’s representative democracy period, or representative democracy with a safety valve on top of it.”

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He also disputes that the initiative process lacks openness, and rewards narrow or parochial interests.

“It is true that interest groups have the money to run campaigns, but that only gets you halfway there,” he said. “The legislatures are highly influenced by interest groups as well.”

In fact, he said, it’s easier to envision lobbyists and special interests manipulating a handful of lawmakers than it is to view the same people as influencing potentially millions of voters.

Moreover, he said, claims that the volume of ballot questions leaves voters confused and ill-informed while legislators study each bill closely is hard to believe.

“I find it curious, there’s really not much deliberation happening in the legislatures,” Matsusaka said.

He said ballot initiatives get debated more thoroughly in the public sphere than most candidates. Plus, voters can go to numerous outside groups or media outlets to learn the details of ballot initiatives without delving into the legalese of a plan.