Taking The Initiative

If you want something done, do it yourself.

Voters in half the states will do just that in November when they decide on ballot questions from medical marijuana to pension funds. In an age of instant polling and Internet voting, some people just don't have much patience for their state legislature.

Dane Waters, president of the Institute and Referendum Institute (IRI), predicts between 60 and 70 statewide ballot measures across the country will be voted on this fall.

These voter-sponsored ballot questions, he said, often focus on "typically emotional issues like affirmative action, partial birth abortion, environmental issues...controversial issues that state legislatures have failed to address."

One hot button issue - school vouchers - is expected to make the ballot in Michigan and California, big presidential battleground states. But Waters predicts drug policy will be the most voted-on ballot question this fall with nine or more measures. In recent years, medical marijuana measures sponsored by billionaire investor George Soros have succeeded in a half dozen states. But critics say the success of such measures shows what's gone wrong with the process.

"The initiative sounds democratic … but the reality is the opposite. A small group of unelected elites sets the agenda," said Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute.

Critics complain the thousands of dollars reportedly spent by the Soros camp on the medical marijuana measures just doesn't jibe with the grassroots spirit. Collecting signatures and advertising are the major costs of a successful ballot question drive. Sponsors have no limits on what they can spend - and no disclosure requirements on what they do spend.

Waters acknowledges another Massachusetts measure this fall that would outlaw dog racing is "unusual in today's age," because it's on the ballot thanks mostly to volunteers. But he defends the participation of paid consultants.

"The 'initiative industry' is not driving the initiative movement; it exists because people utilize the process," he said. "Lawmaking is not an easy process. We as taxpayers spend money for laws to be made in Sacramento and Albany. We need the same resources to make laws through the initiative process."

Alan Rosenthal of Rutgers University's Eagleton Institute of Politics thinks voters pays a price for taking lawmaking into their own hands.

"In the legislative process, there's deliberation, bargaining and compromises. In the initiative process, there is a media campaign, if that. It's yes or no, black or white. When it's over, you have winners and losers. It's not a way to build consensus, which is the best way to make policy."

And it's not clear that voters always understand what policy they're making. Whose eyes have glazed over in a voting booth when staring at paragraphs-log questions written in impenetrable legalese?

"Often times," said Ornstein, "you'll have high-priced consultants making a 'yes' vote sound seductive [to] attract people who oppose (the initiative's real objective) … framing them in ways that can be quite confusing."

Said Rosenthal, "People say the problem is legislatures don't address issues and you have to have initiatives to break that logjam. Usually when you have a stalemate in the legislature, that reflects a stalemate outside the legislature. The legislators reflect a real divison in the society they represent."

But Waters thinks the threat to representative democracy is overstated, pointing out that only 40-percent of ballot questions pass.

"In a hundred years, people have made 800 laws this way. In 1996, the high watermark for the initiatives process, there were 102 initiatives on the ballot: 42 became laws," he said. In contrast, "legislatures passed 17,000 laws that year."

This November, ballot question sponsors hope to ride the coattails of a presidential election year, when turnout is usually higher. "Initiatives typically fair better when there is high voter turnout," said Waters.

But that can cut both ways. For example: California's Proposition 226, a failed "paycheck protection" measure that would have required unions to get members' written permission to use dues for political goals. "Republicans put Prop. 226 on the ballot," said Waters, "and all that did was motivate unions to get their people out."

But even when a ballot measure fails at the polls (and most do), the public dialogue - which may include an expensive advertising blitz - puts an issue on the map and smokes out the candidates.

"Most initiatives are controversial, so candidates for office have to take a position," said Waters.