The following is a list of articles on this site giving reasons why one might want to enact the National Initiative.
Election Reform
FairVote acts to transform our elections to achieve universal access to participation, a full spectrum of meaningful ballot choices and majority rule with fair representation for all. As a catalyst for change, we build support for innovative strategies to win a constitutionally protected right to vote, universal voter registration, a national popular vote for president, instant runoff voting and proportional representation.
Legislative Partnership
Analogy with the private sector
Matsusaka (2004), pp. 130-131:
America does not have a government "by the people"
The United States of America is not, in fact, a true democracy. In a democracy, the people are the government. Today, we elect people to run the government for us. The people we elect do not, for the most part, run the country in the interest of the people; they run it in the interest of themselves. We are led to believe that we must put our trust in these people. We, the People, do not have the power to create laws in our interest. This causes an imbalance of power in the government.
International Treaties
The US government has refrained from ratifying many international treaties. Polls suggest that at least some of these treaties have the support of the majority of the American people. Or maybe not, but at least we could put them to a vote.
Unresponsive government
Article V Constitutional Convention
The legislatures of at least two-thirds of the states can call a national convention to modify the constitution. Any amendments would then need to be ratified by either the legislatures of or ratifying conventions held in three-fourths of the states.
http://www.foavc.org/ argues that we are being denied our constitutional right to an Article V Convention to make amendments, despite 628 (or more) applications by the state legislatures of ALL 50 states.
Redress of grievances
The first amendment reads:
Do you participate in power?
Freedom means participation in power. America is ostensibly the land of the free, but this page examines how much civic freedom you have in comparison to the citizens of Switzerland. You may be surprised to learn that the Swiss enjoy substantially more civic freedom than American citizens.
The following are excerpts from the book "Direct Democracy in Switzerland" by Gregory A. Fossedal.
Sovereign Acts in Direct and Representative Democracies
Real Choice
Matsusaka (2004), p. 143: