Direct Democracy Works

I n November 2004, in addition to electing a president and other representatives, voters nationwide acted as legislators themselves, weighing in on 162 statewide ballot propositions. Voters in 11 states amended their constitutions to ban gay marriage. Voters in California approved a $3 billion bond issue for stem cell research and repealed a state law requiring businesses to provide health insurance to their workers, in Arizona passed a law denying state services to illegal immigrants, in Alaska declined to legalize marijuana, in Colorado required power plants to use clean energy sources, in Florida increased the minimum wage and in Oklahoma established a state lottery. An uncounted but even larger number of local ballot propositions also went before the voters, covering topics ranging from a sales tax increase for police in Los Angeles to land use regulation, such as an April 2004 referendum in Inglewood, California, over whether to exempt Wal-Mart from zoning and environmental regulation if it established a supercenter in the city. The storm of ballot box lawmaking has been raging since the passage of California’s famous tax-cutting Proposition 13 in 1978. Many of the critical policy innovations of the last several decades were ignited and fueled by initiatives, including term limits, physician-assisted suicide, legalized gambling, medical marijuana, capital punishment, abortion, racial preferences/affirmative action and, of course, tax cuts. To a remarkable degree, initiatives and referendums are driving the policy agenda in the states. Overall, more than half of all American states and cities provide for the initiative and referendum, and over 70 percent of the population now lives in