News – Page 22 – The National Citizens Initiative for Democracy

Voters limiting Legislature’s say: Major state decisions being made by initiatives
After Tuesday's election some lawmakers were heard to grumble about mixed messages from voters who approved initiatives that limited property-tax increases, raised tobacco taxes and increased the bureaucracy to regulate home health care. But the results were part of a clear and consistent message from voters: "We'll make the state's major fiscal decisions ourselves." Read the Rest...

From Jeffords to Democracy?
Ever heard of the National Initiative for Direct Democracy? I just got word about it last week, even though the idea is the brainchild of two nonprofit corporations established in 1992 by Mike Gravel, the former Democratic senator from Alaska. But wait. I'm getting ahead of myself. First, let me share with you what I found at the nation's premier public opinion data clearinghouse - the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. Read the Rest...

The Florida Uproar: Deeper Issues
DAVID COLE Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, Cole is a leading specialist in constitutional law and the U.S. Supreme Court. MIKE GRAVEL Read the Rest...

The case for referendums
WHEN Winston Churchill proposed a referendum to Clement Attlee in 1945 on whether Britain’s wartime coalition should be extended, Attlee growled that the idea was an “instrument of Nazism and fascism”. The use by Hitler and Mussolini of bogus referendums to consolidate their power had confirmed the worst fears of sceptics. The most democratic of devices seemed also to be the most dangerous to democracy itself. Read the Rest...

Economics focus: Democracy, happiness and the meaning of life
ECONOMISTS are often accused of taking a desiccated view of human motivation. According to standard theory people are rational maximisers of “utility”—which is the name economists give to whatever it is that people maximise. As it stands, this is hard to disagree with, though not especially revealing. In looser formulations, economists tend to assume that people are mainly out to improve their material standard of living. Read the Rest...

The referendum road
IT IS evening on the edge of Portland. The rain has stopped; the air is fresh; commuters roar down highways to homes in the surrounding greenery, stopping down slip roads to shop for groceries on their way. If you stand in one of these shopping enclaves, watching the cars grunt to a halt in the vast parking lot, you can drink your fill of suburban American stereotypes: the fit and the fat, the polished loafers and the canvas trainers, the clean-shaven and the unkempt. Read the Rest...

California’s style of democracy
WHEN Californians go to the polls next week and again in November, the voters may ignore their legislators even more than they usually do. Like 24 other states—half the country, in effect—California gives its citizens the power to write their own state legislation, by putting on to the ballot proposals backed by a specified number of signatures. Since 1970 the voters have approved 45 such initiatives. California’s secretary of state, Bill Jones, thinks that 1998 could be a record. Read the Rest...

Full Democracy
A Survey of democracy: Happy 21st century, voters! by Brian Beedham Originally published in The Economist Part 1: It means government by the people, and we are the people "Democracy in the 20th century has been a half-finished thing. In the 21st, it can grow to its full height, says Brian Beedham" Read the Rest...

Virtual Washington
Rain or shine, few Americans will go to the polls on Election Day in November 2020. Most will vote by modem, telephone or mail -- and overall citizen participation will be much greater than it is today. So will citizen interest, partly because four or five reasonably serious presidential candidates will be on the ballot, along with at least one official referendum and perhaps half a dozen national advisory referendums. Enthusiasm for the democratic process will have reached a point where even Washington should be more popular. Read the Rest...