2000 League of Women Voters position on Charter Commission

Home

~ I .y,va;~/ 1 J . ~ r V b ~~ ay ..~'S~ ~4 ~ r,,t IOY1 P~f~ IY;isf' j 1 ;~` !~ t ; ~;rr~~tu'' ~r~ roots The increasingly popular ballot initiative is becoming an alternative form of government that its originators never intended. n alternative form of government -the ballot initia- tive - is spreading in the United States. Despite iLv popular appeal and reformist roots, this method of lawmaking is alien to the spirit of the Constitution and its carefully crafted set of checks and balances. Left unchecked, the initiative could challenge or even subvert the system that has served the nation so weU for more than 200 years Though derived from acentury-old idea favored by the Populist and Progressive movements as a weapon against special-interest influence, the initiative. has become a favored tool of interest groups and millionaires with their own poUti- cat and personal agendas. These players - often not even residents of the states whose laws and constitutions they seek to rewrite -have learned the initiative is a more efficient way of achieving their ends than the cumbersome and often time-consuming process of supporting candidates for public office and then lobbying them to pass legislation. In hundreds of municipalities and half tire states - particu- laxly in the West -the initiative has become a rival force to City HaU and the Statehouse. In a single year, 1998, voters across the country bypassed their elected representatives to • end affirmative action, raise the minimum wage, ban bill- boards, permit patients to obtain prescriptions for mat'tjuana, restrict campaign spending and contributions, expand casino gambling, outlaw many forms of hunting, prohibit some abor- • Uons and allow adopted children to obtain the names of their .biological parents. Of 66 statewide initiatives that year, 39 .became law. Simply put, the initiative's growing popularity has given us something that ortce seemed unthinkable -not a government of laws, but laws without government. This new fondness for the initiative, at least in the portion ~ of the country where it has become part o[ the political fab- Iric, is itself evidence of the increasing alienation of Americans .from our system of representative government Americans have always had a healthy skepticism about the .people in public office: The writers of the Constitution began with the assumption that power is a dangerous intoxicant and that . those who wield it must be checked by clear delineation of thpeir authority, ' 1 ~ t what we have today goes well beyond ~ skepticism. in -•nearly every state Ivisited- while researching this phe- ~nomeno0..the~ initiative was •viewed as sacrosanct, :.and the r Legislatuue was held in disrepute. One expression of that dis- dain is the'.term-limits movement, which swept the country in ~the~past two decades, usually by the mechanism of initiative campaigns..It is the clearest expression of the revolt against • representative government. In effect, it is a command: "Clear 'out of there, you bums. None of you is worth saving. We'll •take over the job of writing the laws ourselves." But who is the "we"? Based on my reporting, it is clear that the initiative process has largely discarded its grass-roots origins. It is no longer merely the province of idealistic volun- teers who gather signatures to place legislation. of their own !devising on the ballok Billionaire Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, spent more than $8 milUon in support of a referee- dum on a new football stadium for the Seattle Seahawks. :Allen, who was negotiating to buy the team, even prtid the $9 million cost of running Urc June 1997 special e1RcUon - in I w-tich Washington voters narrowly agreed to prpvide public financing for part of the 5425 million stadium bill. Like so many aspects of American poUtics, the initiative process has become big business. Lawyers, consultants and signature-gathering firms sec each election cycle as an oppor- DAVID BRODER tiY N DICA'I'IiU CULUMNIa'I' trustful of pure democ- racy as they were resent- ful of royal decrees. Direct democracy might work in a small, com- pact society, they argued, 6 it would be impractica nation the size of the 1 States. At the Constitu...,..... Convention in 1787, no voice was raised in support of direct democracy. ~ A century later, with the rise of industrial America and rampant corrvption in the nation's legislatures, political reformers began to question.the work of the founders. Largely rural protest groups from ttie Midwest, South and West came together at the first convention of the Populist Party, In Omaha in 1892. The Populists denounced both Republicans ' and Democrats as corrupt accomplices of the railroad batons, the banks that set ruinous interest rates, ahd the industrial magnates and monopoUsts who profited from the labor of oth- ers whlle paying meager wages. Both the Populists and Progressives saw the initiative pro-, , rasa as a salve for the body poGtic's wounds. An influential pamphlet, "Direct Legislation by the Citizenship Through the Initiative and Referendum;' appeared in 1893. In it, J.W. Sullivan argued that as citizens took on the responslbUity of writing the laws themselves, "each would consequently acquire education in his role and develop a lively interest in ' the public affairs in part under his own management." 'nto this feisty mix of reformers came William Simon U'Ren, a' central figure in the American initiative process. In the 1880s, U'Ren apprenticed himself to a lawyer in Denver and ' became active in politics. He later told Linrnln Steffens, the muckraking journalist, that he was appalled when the Republican basses of Denvcl' gave him what we would now '. call "street money" to buy votes. In the 1890s, having moved to Oregon in search of a health- ier climate, U'Ren helped form the Direct Legislation League. He launched a propaganda campaign, distributing almost half a million pamphlets and hundreds of copies of Sullivan's book in support of a constitutional convention that would enshrine initiative and referendum in Oregon's charter. The proposal failed narrowly in the 1895 session of the Legislature, in part because the Portland Oregonian labeled;it "one of the craziest of all the crazy fads of Populism" a¢d "a theory of fiddle- sticlcs borrowed from a petty foreign state." EWentually, U'Ren lined up enough support for a constitu-' tional amendment to pass easily in 1899. It received the required second endorsement from the ,Legislature two years later, with only one dissenting vote. The voters overwhelming- , ly ratified the amendment in 1802 and it withstood a legal challenge that went all the way to the Supreme Court. U'Ren's handiwork is evident today in his adopted state. The official voters' pamphlet for the 1996 Oregon ballot - rnntaining explanations for 1G citizen-sponsored initatives and; six oUrers referred by Ure Legislature - ran 240 pagcv. It also included paid ads from supporters and opponents. Money. does not always prevail in modern-day initiative fights, but it is almost always a major factor. In fall 1997, more than 200 petitions were circulating for statewide initia- tives that. snnnmrv hnrw•rl In nlarn nn h:J lets the (nllnwino~