initiative, referendum and recall are examples of direct democracy

Arguably the most influential advocate for their use was Charles McCarthy of Wisconsin. This was a highly popular proposal to reduce property taxes in the state by 57 percent. This essay will address itself to these changes by examining what Progressivism did to state and local government: what happened in those states and municipalities where Progressivism effected the most profound changes in government and what the consequences of these developments have been for republican liberty. Others had a more ambitious vision for direct democracy, seeing it as a permanent and regular complement to traditional institutions. A closer look at activity in five statesIllinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Californiaillustrates the empowerment of commissions and expansion of state regulation of business. 251252. Accessible across all of today's devices: phones, tablets, and desktops. As discussed in the L.A. Times Op-Ed column by Mark Baldassare, Californians consistently favor retention of the initiatives on the ballot. For the Progressives, this connection of administration to public opinion made government unprofessional and impeded the kind of expertise necessary to manage the vast agenda they had in mind for government. san diego noise ordinance times; About Us. e. A and C but not B. Anatomy Chapter 12: Appendicular Muscles & Ch. Within six months from this measure's approval by voters, the Secretary of State would be required to develop a system that allows voters to view initiative, referendum, and recall petitions on a statewide internet website and do either of the following: (1) electronically sign the petition (with necessary identifying information) via that website or (2) download, print, and sign a petition document in the "portable document format" (known as PDF). 1911 to Present California Ballot Propositions Select a page from the dropdown below to learn more about California ballot measures. In addition to these principled reasons for conservatives to think carefully about the Progressive agenda at the state and local levels, there is the more concrete objection that Progressive measures have turned state government into a chaotic mess. In fact, most major American cities were greatly influenced by political machines: hierarchical organizations that controlled political offices and those who voted for public officials. The momentum was carried forward by farming interests who needed to ship their commodities and wanted to keep rates low. 63, in Carey and McClellan, eds., The Federalist, p. 327. The first initiative went before the voters in 1912. While several Progressive measuresmost notably the direct primarywere designed to purify political institutions, this was insufficient for many Progressives who sought to bypass political institutions altogether. Proponents of an initiative, referendum, or recall effort must apply for an official petition serial number from the Town Clerk. For the Progressives, such thinking exalted the position of the minority at the expense of vigorous government action in pursuit of social justice. On May 18, 1981, Italians resoundingly defeated a proposal to repeal a controversial 1978 abortion law, although the Catholic church had strenuously urged repeal. Conservatives everywhere might consider these examples as they weigh the limitations of Progressive direct democracy, as well as the dangers it poses to republican government. County election officials have to verify the validity of thousands of voter signatures on petitions. Recall, the device by which voters may remove public officials from office, also originates with the people. Commissions and Railroad Regulation. In addition to problems of efficiency, it had also raised serious questions of consenthow can rules be made legitimately without the consent of the peoples elected representatives?and separation of powershow can executive bodies be granted legislative authority? Free Speech Wilson maintained that if the opposing Senators had had to stand for immediate popular judgment on the basis of their League vote instead of being able to ride things out to the ends of their long terms, public opinion would have been enough to push the treaty over the top. In 1900, Galveston, Texas, was devastated by a hurricane. Summary of Fiscal Effects. California also shows how another Progressive mechanismthe recallcan likewise be a tool to dislodge entrenched liberal interests from institutions of government. Currently twenty-four states allow some form of initiative and referendum. Under the coordination of the Direct Primary Nomination League, a new, statewide direct primary initiative was put on the ballot in 1904 and was approved by voters by an almost 4-to-1 margin. The recall permitted citizens to remove a public official from office through a process of petition and vote, similar to the initiative and referendum. [37] Frederick C. Mosher et al., City Manager Government in Seven Cities (Chicago: Public Administration Service, 1940), pp. Chart reflects the most common use of the terms initiative, recall and referendum. As a result, the state constitution has become so long and convoluted that no one other than lawyers can possibly make sense of it. Its success in 1978, despite the strong opposition of the governor, state legislature, and the bureaucracy, prompted tax revolts in several other states. It proposed granting women the right to vote, and was approved with 68 percent in favor. [18] Steven A. Piott, Giving Voters a Voice: The Origins of the Initiative and Referendum in America (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003), pp. And just as Michigan has learned what can be achieved by concentrating on winning elections, California has learned what cannot be achieved when elections are neglected. To make sense of the specific changes Progressives brought to state and local government, we must first briefly recall the basic elements of Progressive political thought. Unions responded in 2012 by attempting to enshrine the right to collective bargaining in the state constitution through the ballot initiative process. McCarthy had been appointed the document cataloguer of a special reference collection established for Wisconsin legislators and from that position pushed his arguments for greater reliance on expert research and guidance by legislators in Wisconsin and other states. Both the ballot initiative and the referendum were devices that placed legislation or constitutional amendments directly before the voters. 45, October 15, 2012, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/10/barack-obama-and-the-crisis-of-liberalism. While these principled and practical problems with mechanisms of direct democracy ought therefore to give us serious concern about the effects of Progressivism on state government, it must also be acknowledged that in recent decades, these mechanisms have made possible many conservative victories that otherwise would have been unattainable. 174177, 189. The recall, of course, can be used by the Left as well, as was the case with the attempt to remove Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker from office in 2012. In 1911, California voters approved the constitutional processes of initiative, referendum, and recall. Filtering popular will through representative institutions had empowered a minority to thwart the peoples wishes, since those institutions had become beholden to special interests:[7], Roosevelt called for adoption by states of the initiative, the popular referendum, and the recall of elected officials in order to circumvent recalcitrant institutions of government. [27] Jon C. Teaford, The Rise of the States: Evolution of American State Government (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), p. 72. Progressives took aim at these machines both by advocating structural reforms that would reduce the power of traditional political institutions and by seeking to attach machine clients directly to the government itself. The online petition system at issue in this measure will have some such requirements. Progressives disagreed fundamentally with James Madison and most of the other American Founders on the basic facts about human nature and its impact on democratic government. Over time, after the development of the online petition system, the state and local government net costs or savings from this measure would depend on the system that the Secretary of State develops under this measure. These annual costs likely would be millions of dollars or more. In 1912, led by Progressive Democratic governor Woodbridge N. Ferris, the legislature enacted the initiative and referendum, which were subsequently approved by voters in 1913.[19]. But these devices, like the recall, are legal only in certain states and municipalities, not at the national level. In the 1890s, there were some isolated victories for Progressives at the municipal level, though more sweeping changes in city government had to wait until the first decade of the 20th century. More generally, as wide-ranging as the Progressive changes were in state government, most state-level movements grew out of experiments at the municipal level. [35], While it is beyond dispute that the commission form of government weakens the power of voters (though not as fully as the city-manager system, discussed below), the irony is that in many cases, these voters essentially disenfranchised themselves by adopting it. Indeed, while Progressive Presidents, especially Woodrow Wilson, oversaw significant policy achievementsthe national income tax, the Federal Reserve Act, and the Federal Trade Commission Act to name just a fewthe Progressives were unable to achieve much formal structural change in American government itself beyond the direct election of Senators in the Seventeenth Amendment, as significant as that was. If, for instance, legislators were too beholden to unelected party leaders and thus unresponsive to public opinion, mechanisms like the direct primary could be employed to reduce the power of political parties and tie political candidates more closely to rank-and-file voters. Campaigns to support or oppose such measures regularly raise millions of dollars to develop proposals, fund signature-gathering campaigns, and present their viewpoints to the public at large. 4142. Because of the home-rule provisions of Californias 1879 constitution, these cities could draft their own chartersthe municipal equivalent of constitutions. By continuing to use this site, you consent to the terms of our cookie policy, which can be found in our. If it passes, it becomes law. Among these were the introduction of initiative, referendum, and recall at both the state and local levels. In some jurisdictions, the legislative body may adopt Code amendments proposed by initiative in lieu of placing them on the ballot. Direct democracy occurs when policy questions go directly to the voters for a decision. Engagement is a Democracy. [32] See, for example, the case of Seattle or the cases of cities in Ohio like Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati. b. By the end of the 1920s, 17 states had adopted some kind of reorganization legislation aimed at curbing the proliferation of commissions that had been so popular just a decade or two earlier. Direct democracies may operate through an assembly of citizens or by means of referenda and initiatives in which citizens vote on issues instead of for candidates or parties. Initiative, Referendum, and Recall: "Direct Democracy" While the United States of America was founded upon a federal republican form of government in which laws are passed through representative democracy, the original distrust of the common people deciding both their leaders and in some states even their own laws has subsided. As historian Steven L. Piott has observed, agitators for direct democracy in Oregon cited the influence of corrupt political machines on the electoral process. . Some saw them as important temporary measures, to be used occasionally when the ordinary institutions of government had become corrupt and needed correction. For example, when a school district wants to issue bonds for building construction, it goes to the voters with an obligatory referendum. That Pre-Revolutionary Period and the Roots of the American Political Tradition. TITLE 1, CHAPTER 12 - INITIATIVE, REFERENDUM AND RECALL 3 title so prepared by him. The most popular measures by far were the ballot initiative, the referendum, and the direct primary. An initiative is normally a law or constitutional amendment proposed and passed by the citizens of a state. The term is also sometimes used for the practice . To re-enable the tools or to convert back to English, click "view original" on the Google Translate toolbar. In Michigan, the constitutional convention held in 1906 yielded only watered-down direct democracy measures, but by 1912, voters had become much more intense about the issue even though the legislature had enacted several laws favored by Progressives in the session following the 1910 election, including railroad regulation, revision of the state tax structure, a state primary law, and a workers compensation law. Britannica does not review the converted text. TR went beyond some other Progressives in calling for popular referenda on key state judicial decisions. The third element of this direct democracy agenda was the recall. The best evidence for this is the Progressives themselves, who were entirely open and honest about it. Improved homework resources designed to support a variety of curriculum subjects and standards. Holding a referendum could have empowered Canadians to stop the latest carbon tax hikes or outlaw the incoming second carbon tax. The measures altered Oregons constitution, requiring a petition of 8 percent of qualified voters to place an initiative on the ballot and 5 percent of qualified voters to force a referendum on a legislative measure. [4] Theodore Roosevelt, The Right of the People to Rule, in Ronald J. Pestritto and William J. Atto, eds., American Progressivism: A Reader (Lanham, Md. There was more resistance to the measures there, where the state Senate made supporters increase petition requirements (to 10 percent for initiatives and 6 percent for referenda) and allowed the legislature to amend laws passed by initiative two years after their enactment. A copy of the ballot title as prepared by the City Attorney shall be furnished by the Clerk with his or her approved form of any initiative or referendum petition, as provided herein, to the person or persons or organization or organizations under whose authority These decisions include funding, budgets, candidate removal, candidate approval, policy changes, and constitutional amendments. 43, July 11, 2012, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/06/the-transformation-of-american-democracy-teddy-roosevelt-the-1912-election-and-the-progressive-party. Ibid., pp. This is why the city-manager model was often accompanied by the short ballotthat is, a sharp reduction in the number of elective offices that went hand-in-hand with the concentration of power in the office of the city manager and with the push to remove amateur or ordinary citizens from positions of authority. d. laws enacted by state legislatures. . These constitutional limits on government presented a fundamental obstacle for the original Progressives, who sought to free the power of the national government for the purpose of responding to a set of social and economic problems that the founding generation supposedly never could have envisioned. These devices were used most widely in the West, where South Dakota first adopted them in 1898 and was joined soon thereafter by Utah, Oregon, Nevada, Montana, and Oklahoma. As Smith and Tolbert conclude, Although Progressive Era advocates of direct democracy had hoped to use the initiative to eliminate interest groups clout, we find that many political organizations have adapted to the presence of the initiative, educating themselves to use the process to advance their agendas.[41] If it had been a Progressive goal to reduce the influence of money in politics, that certainly has not happened through the initiative process, as the sums spent on initiatives in recent decades have come to dwarf spending on races for state political office. In California, sweeping direct democracy measures were adopted in 1911. Municipalities were often the laboratories for Progressive changes in state government. [44] Steven Hayward, Arnolds Wild State, National Review, September 1, 2003, p. 17. In the end, however, in spite of arguments marshaled by opponents about abandoning representative government and falling victim to the tyranny of the majority, both the legislature and state voters overwhelmingly approved all of the direct democracy devices. Voters ratified these amendments in a special election on October 10, 1911. A comprehensive study by Daniel A. Smith and Caroline J. Tolbert has demonstrated that, nationwide, the initiative process has empowered special-interest groups rather than weakened them. The rise of the commission form reflected the desire to professionalize city government, which was to take place by moving power away from popularly elected city councils and into the hands of expert administrators. He rejected the Madisonian view that representation was needed to refine public opinion and countered that it was time for representative institutions to take on a new role:[11]. In addition to primaries and mechanisms of direct legislation, Progressives at the local level also advocated new means of organizing city government itself through both commission government and city managers. For Croly, reducing or eliminating the role of parties came from the same principle as circumventing the legislature with direct democracy mechanisms: The point was to undo the representative democracy that the Framers of the Constitution had thought essential. They began to employ the use of the "emergency clause" with bills that they felt were vulnerable to a voter-initiated referendum. While California voters enacted Proposition 13, they also enacted, just a decade later, Proposition 98, an amendment to the state constitution that guarantees that 40 percent of state revenues must go to education and is thus a huge boon to the public employees unions. b. Ronald Pestritto a. See answer Advertisement Advertisement marenmhammer08 marenmhammer08 Reforms. Somewhat comically, both states launched their efforts to rein in commissions by forming special commissions to study the problem and advise on a remedy. To do this, petitions have to be signed by a certain portion of the electorate, or voters. [24] Commissioners here and elsewhere were typically not elected, but appointed by the governor for fixed terms. Legislative reference services were one way of moving things in the direction of professionalization. California may be the most familiar case of the Progressives assault on railroad interests, but serious regulation did not come there until after the direct democracy provisions were put into the state constitution in 1911. Other major cities in California followed suit in adopting mechanisms for direct legislation: Sacramento in 1903 and San Bernardino, San Diego, Pasadena, and Eureka in 1905. Such was the case in Cleveland, where Tom L. Johnson was elected mayor in 1901 and went after the railroads and utilities. New Jersey and Minnesota were among the leaders in these efforts. Furthermore, consider that within the past few years, conservatives have been able to achieve much more in state government by way of their victories in the 2010 elections than they ever have through the initiative process. There are two kinds of referenda: obligatory and optional. 8889. Sullivan, who had published his book Direct Legislation in 1895, gave speeches in California, and ultimately, the Direct Legislation League of California was formed and became a national movement. If they fail, they may be submitted directly to a vote by the public, who may override the action of the legislature. Legislators in Texas pointed to the fact that this reform actually gave the people themselves less power by reducing the number of elective offices and delegating legislative authority away from their elected representatives on the city council and into the hands of nonpartisan administrators, elected or otherwise. In Oregon, the very first use of the ballot initiativewhich had been put into the state constitution in 1902was to adopt the direct primary statewide. This is a device, used mostly in the United States at the state and local level, whereby voters may remove a public official from office before the expiration of his or her term.

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