About this Blog
Direct democracy -- the Switzerland-inspired system of initiatives, referenda and recalls that allows voters to make and repeal laws in 24 states -- is poorly understood. It isn’t even very direct. Direct democracy has become blockbuster democracy: a half-billion-dollar international industry of signature gatherers, consultants, and election lawyers who use ballot measures less as a method of making law and more as a tool of mega-communications to boost some politicians, hurt others, and supplement lobbying campaigns.
Blockbuster democracy is a decentralized business that practices wide-open politics. This blog aims to provide a center of news, analysis and conversation for and about the industry. We will report from blockbuster democracy’s capital -- California -- but we’ll monitor ballot measures from across the country and around the globe.
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More Scrutiny of Consultant Studies in Ballot Box Planning
This piece from the San Diego paper blasts a study commissioned about a local planning initiative in San Marcos. This may seem like a small issue, but it's not in California and in the West, where more and more local land use decisions are being made by voters, a phenomenon known as "ballot box planning." In my recent reporting and panel on the subject, I discovered that consulting companies that provide biased studies for cities attempting to fight ballot box planning have become a minor cottage indusry. A land use ballot initiative campaign in Thousand Oaks, Calif., earlier this month turned on just such a study. Commissioned by city officials who opposed the initiative, the study made several unsupported claims about the problems the city would have if the initiative -- which would have required voter approval for large-scale developments -- had passed. While there was some backing away from the study's more ridiculous conclusions, the study appeared to have convinced voters that the initiative was problematic. It lost.
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