Ballot Controversies

IN THE UNITED States, direct democracy includes the procedures of initiative, referendum, and recall voting. Ideally, direct democracy creates citizen-legislators capable of providing an external check on representative institutions, strengthening the democratic character of American politics. These procedures are present at the state and local levels, but do not exist at the federal level, where republican institutions and procedures remain insulated from this form of citizen input. From their adoption in the early part of the 20th century, these procedures were heralded as the first purely democratic elements of American politics, capable of contradicting the increasingly noxious influence of special interests in state governance.

The question that remains a century later is if the procedures have delivered on their normative promise of greater representation of citizen preferences and, more specifically, if special interests are able to dominate these procedures in much the same way they dominated state legislative and executive arenas when the reform procedures were first adopted. Ballot controversies concern the role of direct democracy in the United States, the capacity of citizens to pursue their interests through initiative and referendum voting, and if special interests are able to continue their influence in direct democracy in much the same way they have succeeded in influencing republican political processes.

When South Dakota became the first state in the nation to adopt initiative and referendum voting in 1898, the procedures were celebrated as a tool for citizens to counter the effect of corporate interests on state politics, weaken party bosses, and restore power to ordinary people. In just over a decade, several other states adopted these procedures. The momentum behind their adoption rose out of the platforms of the People's or Populist Party across the Great Plains and, later, the Progressive Party's reform agenda. In 2007, 24 states [Page 53]in the United States allowed citizens to initiate ballot measures. Direct democracy states typically allow their legislature to refer statutory laws to the public for a vote, circumventing the normal process of adopting legislation through legislative and executive action, and offer citizens the right to refer measures of the legislature back to the public for consideration and potential invalidation if sufficient public support does not exists for these popularly referred measures.

Much of the direct democracy literature suggests that initiative and referendum voting does not meet the normative goals of 19th and 20th century reformers who advocated for their adoption in the American states. An oft-cited conclusion is that the resource bias of well-funded interests, as well as the influence of elite policy entrepreneurs and professional campaign organizations, makes it difficult for the populist inspirations to be realized in contemporary ballot issue election practice. However, in several studies scholars have found that direct democracy produces outcomes consistent with the original intentions of these institutions. Citizen groups can maintain advantages over narrowly-interested economic groups in pursuing new policy through the initiative process because voters prefer measures presented by citizen groups rather than economic groups. Similarly, direct democracy has been associated with increases in voter turnout and other direct forms of participation that support the populist goals for this institution. It remains unclear if the interests these procedures were designed to benefit are, in fact, benefited or further harmed by the presence of initiative and referendum voting.

...