The views expressed by the contributors are their own and not the view of the Editorial Review or The Politics Society.
By: Louis Bartholomew ’18
In the past year, referendums have swept parts of the globe to new, and oftentimes uncharted, territory: Turkey or Thailand’s recent referendums that have cemented executive and military control, Britain’s referendum on EU membership or Catalonia’s vote for independence.
Referendums and initiatives, as practiced today, are often an extension of direct democracy, in which citizens vote on specific policies to be passed or denied, oftentimes bypassing the legislature. Examples of this type of consistent direct democracy can be found in Switzerland, which has had over 140 referendums in the past 20 years, and California, which had over 10 ballot initiatives in the 2016 election alone. These measures ranged from voting on international treaties, to marijuana legalization, to requiring condoms in porn. This form of passing legislation is not the norm across the democratic world.
In contrast, in a representative democracy, citizens elect representatives who then debate, write and vote on legislation. Most democracies across the world rely on such a system, whether it be in the form of an executive presidency or a parliamentary system of government. Referendums are often used as the final say in a particular policy on which the legislature has already debated and passed legislation. For instance, proponents of referendums stress that they return power back to the people and away from the hands of corrupt elites who often don’t share their interests. In a study conducted by Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, researchers from Northwestern and Princeton University respectively, found that members of Congress and state legislatures are more likely to pass legislation that is favored by economic elites and special interest groups, while the average citizen has little to no influence on policy. Such results might help explain why even though between 60 to 90% of people are in favor of more gun control, little has been done to combat the issue of gun violence in the United States.
One of the other major arguments in favor of referendums is that they promote self-determination for regions within states. While the UK has developed a system for certain states, such as Scotland, to engage in legal referendum votes that could result in independence (such as the failed vote in 2014 and the proposed 2018 vote), other nations, such as Spain, have staunchly resisted such attempts by local states to hold such votes. In Spain’s case, it includes regions that have their own unique culture and language, such as the Basque Country and Catalonia. Surely, proponents will argue, there can be no democratic defense for forcing voters of a specific region to remain part of a nation of in which they no longer wish to be.
However, critics of referendums counter that they have a tendency to reduce complex policy in a simple up or down vote that is then given over to a public that simply does not have the time or expertise to grapple with such minutiae. Though it seems an elitist argument on the surface, consider one seemingly easy question that California had up for referendum in 2016. According to the ballot, “A “yes” vote supported legalizing recreational marijuana for persons aged 21 years or older under state law and establishing certain sales and cultivation taxes. One might think this a simple wording of an obvious issue. However, why not a vote for decriminalization of marijuana? What happens to non-violent offenders who have been convicted already?
What are the “certain sales” and “cultivation taxes” going to amount to? What are the penalties for underage smoking? There are so many details that cannot be taken into account in such a simple ballot measure, and that, critics argue, is the precise problem with referendums — they reduce issues to a simple vote when the process of legislation is anything but simple. By preventing the legislature from debating the full scope of the issue, voting on wording and taking into account different arguments from activist and special interest groups, it is much more likely that the result of the referendum, just like the result of polls, will be heavily influenced by the wording of the question itself.
Remember the aforementioned gun control polls that vary so widely? It turns out that when different pollsters ask slight variations of questions on a single issue, respondents give widely varying responses. For instance, Gallup found that 60% of its respondents felt that “laws covering firearms sales should be made more strict,” while a poll from ABC News found that roughly 90% of Americans “supported a law requiring background checks on people buying guns at gun shows.” These polls asked slightly different questions, but they are lumped into the same category of “support for gun control” by advocates who then point to this as evidence that the country is moving away from gun culture.
However, Gallup also conducted an earlier poll from 2008 that found that 73% of Americans believe the Second Amendment guarantees the rights of Americans to bear arms. The American public is a complex and seemingly contradictory electorate on a myriad of issues and is also prone to acute changes in belief, as in the rapid change in views on gay rights and same-sex marriage over the past 20 years.
These rapid changes in opinion, while welcome to most liberal voters in the case of gay marriage, are not as welcome when it comes to other issues, such as abortion, which has been more volatile over the years. Because of this, critics of referendums charge that they can simply codify into law the momentary impulses or prejudices of the public, rather than being filtered through the rigorous debate of the legislature. While many of us might like to see referendums on issues with which we agree and that would pass, it is unlikely that many of us would like to see referendums on transgender rights, gay rights, voting rights or collective bargaining when they are susceptible to losing — see Prop 8 and the over 20 times states voted to ban same-sex marriage.
While it might seem appetizing on the surface to allow referendums to augment or supplement the democratic process of creating and enacting legislation, the dangers of putting fundamental human rights up to the ballot, or enacting anachronistic or overly simplistic legislation, would seem to count against the popular referendum as a tool for democracy. In fact, it might threaten to outsource an important function of our legislatures. Allowing this facet of our government to work properly through civic engagement in campaigning and making sure that our representatives are representing our interests in the best way they can is essential. If they are failing us, it is incumbent upon voters to not circumvent that process when it suits them. Conversely, it would be naive to assume such a process could not be used against our interests and fundamental rights at some point in the future.
Louis Bartholomew is a senior studying public policy at New York University. He can be reached at lwb232@nyu.edu