Direct Democracy

Concepts that today would be regarded as direct democracy have been around since the ancient Greeks, so it is not surprising that in 1775 Thomas Jefferson proposed that the voters themselves approve Virginia’s constitution, but his suggestion arrived after the delegates to the drafting convention had already approved it and adjourned. In 1857 Congress mandated that state constitutions be approved directly by the voters in each state rather than by the legislatures or conventions. Forty years later in 1897 Nebraska became the first state to allow its cities to include initiative and referendum provisions in their charters.

The rise of the Populist Party at the end of the nineteenth century spurred the movement to incorporate direct democracy procedures into the American system of representative government, at least in the states. The party’s platform in 1892 included public ownership of railroads, a graduated income tax (see Taxation), direct elections to the U.S. Senate (originally senators were chosen by the [Page 155] state legislatures), and direct democracy tools such as the initiative and the referendum. In 1898 South Dakota became the first state to adopt initiative and referendum procedures statewide, and in 1904 Oregon put the use of statewide initiative on the ballot, but, ironically, the citizens defeated it.

The movement to supplement representative democracy institutions and procedures in some states grew out of the popular distrust of and dissatisfaction with elected state officials, who are often perceived as being interested only in serving the special-interest groups that help them get elected and not the average citizen. In many states, however, the direct democracy process has been co-opted by those same groups and used to further their own interests. Such groups can pay people to collect the necessary signatures to get their initiatives on the ballot and then can mount expensive campaigns to persuade voters to support their proposal.

...