2000 League of Women Voters position on Charter Commission

Home

J7 t~,~ drugs" was a areadfm mistake. They banded together to sup- port medical mat~juana irdtiatives in five Western states. Tbe best krwwrr of them was bllllonaire financier George Soros of New York. He and his political partners -Phoenix business- man John Sperling and Cleveland businessman Peter B. I.ewls - personally contributed more than 75 percent of the E1.5 million spent on behalf of a suocesgful medical marijuana ini- tiative in just one of the states, Arizona. The issue isn't whether medical marijuana laws are good or bad" As Arizona state Rep. Mike Gardner rnmplained to me, "The initiative was part of our eonstitution when we became a state, because it was supposed to offer people a way of overriding special-interest groups. But-it's turned 190 degrees; and now the special-interest groups use the initiative for their own purposes. Why should a New York millionaire be writing the laws of Arizona?" When I relayed Gardner's question to Soros, he replied: "I live in one place, but I cauider myself a citizen of the world I Gave foundations in 30 countries, and I believe certain uni- versal prlnclples apply everywhere -including Arizona." It won't be long before tbe twin forces of tec]urology and public opinion coalesce )n a political movement for a national initiative -allowing the public to substitute the simplicity of majority rule for what must seem to many Americans the arcane, outof~ate model of the Constitution. In fact, such a debate already is under way, based on what I beard at a May 1999 forum sponsored by the Initiative and Referendum Invtitute in Washington, D.C. M. Dane Waters, the institute's president, cut his political teeth on the term-limas movement, and the group's member- ship includes firms in the initiative industry. But Waters strove to keep the forum intellectually honest, inviting critics as well as supporters of the initiative process. There was no doubt about the leanings of most of those in attendance. Keynote speaker was Kirk Fordice, then governor of Mississippi, who was cheered when he saluted the audience as "the greatest rnllection of mavericks in the world The goal that unites us is to return a portion of the rnnsiderable power of government to individual atizens ...and take control from the hands of professional politicians and bureaucrats." Fordice, a Republican, noted his state was the most recent to adopt the initiative, in 1992. Since then, he lamented, "only one initiaffve has made it onto the ballot," aterm-limits mea- sure that voters rejected. When I began researching the initiative process, I was agnostic about it. But imw that I've heard the arguments and seen the initiative industry in action, the choice is easy. I would choose James Madison and the Constitution's checks and balances over the seductive simplicity of Gravel's up-0r- down initiative vote. We should be able to learn from experi-