Posted on 07/25/2005 4:25:21 AM PDT by Molly Pitcher
Last week, as one of the great rituals of democracy in America -- the filling of a Supreme Court vacancy -- was getting underway, democracy in Massachusetts was nearly getting mugged.
Massachusetts is one of 24 states in which voters can approve or reject laws at the polls, a power they have had since the initiative and referendum were added to the state constitution in 1918. It is a power they have tended to exercise sparingly. From 1990 to 2004, for example, only 14 ballot initiatives became law -- an average of less than one a year.
Why so few? In part because ballot measures are generally a last resort, something aggrieved citizens turn to only after lawmakers repeatedly ignore their pleas or the governor brushes them off or the bureaucracy refuses to budge or the hired lobbyists shoot down every attempt at reform.
But part of the reason is also that lawmakers make it so difficult for proposed laws to reach the ballot. They require citizen petitions to be signed by tens of thousands of registered voters, allow proponents only a narrow window of time in which to collect those signatures, then make them get each signature verified by the clerk of the city or town in which the signer lives. They restrict the topics that a ballot question may address. They impose such stringent standards that a single stray mark on a petition -- a food stain, a highlighting -- can invalidate every signature on the page.
"Many legislators see public policy as their province and theirs alone," says Pam Wilmot of Common Cause, which promotes honest and accountable government. "They get offended when voters want to have a say. Inside the State House there is fairly widespread resentment toward initiatives -- if not outright hostility."
Which is why some Massachusetts Democrats have wanted for years to raise the ballot-access hurdles even higher -- so high that they would just about end citizen initiatives once and for all. Last week they almost pulled it off.
By a 12-1 vote, the Legislature's Election Laws Committee reported out a bill that would have banned ballot campaigners from paying petition-circulators by the signature and required circulators to swear, under the pains and penalties of perjury, that each name was signed in their presence and by the voter named -- poison pills, given the number of signatures needed and the short time in which to assemble them. Worse yet, the bill would have obligated the secretary of state to post signers' names and addresses on the Internet -- the better for opponents to browbeat or deceive them into recanting their support.
"Make no mistake about it," said Chip Ford, co-director of Citizens for Limited Taxation, which has conducted several initiative campaigns over the years. "This is war."
He wasn't the only one who thought so. Across the political spectrum, the bill was seen as an underhanded attempt to permanently cripple the public's right to self-government. In addition to CLT, it was condemned by Common Cause, the Massachusetts Family Institute, and the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group, by the state's Republican governor, Mitt Romney, and by its Democratic secretary of state, William Galvin.
Such ideological diversity reflects the fact that the power to adopt or repeal laws by ballot is neither liberal nor conservative. It is democratic. It can be used to lower taxes or raise them, to ban racial preferences or impose them, to endorse the death penalty or oppose it. Massachusetts voters understand that in a system rigged to make legislators all but untouchable, the initiative and referendum are a vital check and balance. Legislators understand it too. That is why they want so badly to eviscerate them.
Sad to say, the initiative process in the Bay State may be nearly dead anyway. Lately, it has become almost routine for the Massachusetts Legislature to countermand voter-approved laws it dislikes, such as the tax deduction for charitable donations, the "Clean Elections" campaign-finance measure, or the rollback of the income tax rate to 5 percent. All three were enacted by decisive majorities, but lawmakers treated them as mere suggestions they were free to disregard. In two other cases, lawmakers derailed proposed amendments that were headed for the ballot by refusing to follow the procedures spelled out in the state Constitution.
"For 20 years I preached to the students of Princeton that the referendum ... was bosh," said Woodrow Wilson, a one-time political science professor. "I have since investigated and I want to apologize to those students." Far from being "bosh," he had come to realize, the right to let voters decide the fate of a law is the "safeguard of politics." In Massachusetts last week, that safeguard almost came to an end. Luckily, the plot was exposed. But it's only a matter of time before the plotters try again.
Mass is a state of jackbooted thugs, who over the years have cemented their power structure so firmly that almost all resistance is futile. The control freaks run rampant.
Glad I don't live there, but I know several missionaries who are actually called to Mass., like an oppressed foreign country or something.
Good. Down with democracy. The United States, like all good countries, is a republic, not a democracy and should remain as such. The progressive-era state ballot initiatives are well-intentioned claptrap.
I sometimes can not tell when someone is serious or not, usually they are not but forget to indicate it is sarcasm, so I can only ask, are you serious?
The communists controlled legislature here simply ignores these ballot initiatives once passed anyhow.
Making it nearly impossible to get them on the ballot does not really matter.
Indeed...
I have updated my FMCDH (From My Cold Dead Hands) sign-off with the addition of (BITS).....Blood In The Streets, which I foresee coming soon, due to the enormous increase of the Marxist progressive movement being shoved down the throat of this failing REPUBLIC through the Judicial tyranny of fiat law, the passing of unconstitutional laws by the Legislative and Executive branches of our government and the enormous tax burden placed upon the average American to support unconstitutional programs put forth by Marxist ideology.
I do not advocate revolution. I only think of what I foresee.
FMCDH(BITS)
"Lately, it has become almost routine for the Massachusetts Legislature to countermand voter-approved laws it dislikes, such as the tax deduction for charitable donations, the "Clean Elections" campaign-finance measure, or the rollback of the income tax rate to 5 percent. All three were enacted by decisive majorities, but lawmakers treated them as mere suggestions they were free to disregard."
This brings a thought to mind - there should be a mechanism for punishing elected officials if a) they break campaign promises or b) they do reprehensible things like this. I'd suggest the public, once a year, being able to vote on whether or not said official should refund his salary for that year, 2/3 majority required to pass. That might take the place of a conscience for some of these "lawmakers".
If you think initiatives and referendums are so wonderful, you ought to try living in CA.
Yes I am serious. Notice this site is "FreeRepublic," not "FreeDemocracy." The framers were afraid of democracy, and justly so --- just read the Federalist Papers if you don't believe me. Ballot initiatives are simply a form of mob rule, promoted across the US in the early 20th century by a crowd of utopian socialists. Get conservatives elected to the State House and to Congress, but don't undermine the Republic, unless you really want decisions left in the hands of the better demagoguers (who I guarantee you are the Clinton crowd).
Yes, I understand the founders created a republic. I also know they created a series of checks and balances. To me, the initative process is a "check" on non-responsive policticans.
Really? I always thought that the check we had on non-responsive politicians was something called an election. If you don't like your elected leaders, vote someone else into office or run yourself. What's so complicated about that? The ballot measure sidesteps the whole republican process, throwing the country over to the whims of the mob. Its a very scary prospect, or at least should be. Read what Hamilton wrote about an excess of democracy if you don't believe me.
We will have to agree to disagree.
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