Direct Democracy

Germans seeking to expand direct democray face a steep, historical obstacle: the Nazi use of plebiscites has widely discredited direct legislation. But a group of mostly young Germans (many of them with ties to the environmental movement) think the country should have the initiative and referendum all all levels of government.

So, for the last 8 years, they've been driving a bus around Germany. They take turns living on the bus, often for months at a time. They visit towns and talk with people about the virtues of direct democracy. They've been having success. Use of the direct democracy is now common in German localities. There have been thousands of measures, many of them on the same local development controversies that appear on American ballots. And more and more Gemran states are adopting direct democracy.  But no such luck yet at the federal level.

The bus itself is quite an advertisement. Inside and outside, it is full of pro-direct democracy messages. I saw the bus today--it's parked outside the direct democracy conference I'm attending in Aarau, Switzerland. Michael von der Lohe, who started as an intern on the bus and is now one of the riders, explained, "Our inspiration is to be found not in politics but in art." Of course.

if Swiss direct democracy has a Mt. Olympus, this may be it. Altdorf, where I'm spending the night, is the capital of the tiny canton -- that's what the Swiss call their states -- of Uri, in the center of the country. It's also the hometown of William Tell, Swiss hero. One caveat: It's not a mountain really. Altdorf is in  a narrow valley, with steep, sometimes sheer moutains on each side. It put me in mind of the Yosemite Valley.

This may be the most direct democratic part of the world's most advanced direct democracy. Uri has just 35,000 people, 25,000 of them eligible to vote. It was one of the original three Swiss cantons, dating to 1291. (Tell, in a popular founding myth that has little historical authenticity, shot the Austrian overlord of Uri with a crossbow in 1307). As we arrived in town, election returns showed a flat tax referendum passing at the ballot, along with another measure. Next, the canton's voters will consider an initaitive to lower the voting age to 16. (A nearby Canton has moved to do the same).

On Saturday, I leave for Aarau, Switzerland to attend the first global conference of academics and journalists who study direct democracy. Technology permitting, I'll file occasional reports on what I learn. As part of the trip, I'll be visiting the mountain canton of Uri, one of the original three Swiss cantons from 1291. It has as strong a claim as any to be the birthplace of the modern system of direct democracy.

This is my second visit to Switzerland on ballot-related business. I observed the Swiss referendum elections in the spring of 2005. Direct democracy in the United States was based on the Swiss example of initiatives, referenda and recalls. In the next few weeks, you'll be hearing from me in print and at a New America forum in Sacramento on Oct. 14 about the differences in the structure of Swiss and American direct democracy -- and how one lesson from Switzerland might be adapted to California to make our state's politics a little less dysfunctional.

Get ready, America, for a lesson in one of our country's strangest states. What makes Alaska so different? It's not just the cold and the empty landscape. (CORRECTED 9/4): Alaska is one of a few states to have had direct democracy since its founding. Arizona has had the initiative and referendum since statehood, and Oklahoma since shortly after it joined the union. 

So it's fair to say that Alaska has been shaped more profoundly by direct democracy than almost any other state in the union. As every bit of Gov. Sarah Palin's life is scrutinized, you'll hear lots of odd things for which direct democracy is part of the answer. (Here's my strongest prediction about this choice: once Americans learn how Alaska works, Leno and Letterman will start making jokes -- and it'll be years before they stop). For example, she'll have to admit -- as she has done in the past -- that she smoked marijuna. But she'll have an explanation that may surprise people. Marijuana was LEGAL in Alaska until 1990, and not just for medicinal purposes. Thank the voters for the right. The voters also took the right away.

Supporters of bringing statewide initiatives and referenda to Connecticut are campaigning for a November measure that would establish a state constitutional convention with the goal of establishing direct democracy there. But big money interests, mostly on the left, are lining up against the November measure. The Associated Press explains.

In states such as California, where Democrats control the legislature and most elected posts, Democratic leaders often rail against the use of direct democracy and work to prevent measures. Republicans paint themselves as supporters of initiatives and the people.

In Utah, however, the political dynamic is different -- and the parties have different positions. After seeing a school voucher bill and other legislation reversed by referendum, GOP legislative leaders are trying to restrict use of the referendum. And the state Democratic party has made the protection of direct democracy a top priority. The Desert News has more.

After a busy spring and summer, signature gathering across the country is finally reaching its 2008 conclusion. The final deadlines for turning in signatures for November ballot initiatives are this week in three states: Colorado (August 4), North Dakota (August 5), and Ohio (August 6). Deadlines in all the other states have already passed. So  I'm heading to a small town in rural Wisconsin (your blogger's Cheesehead in-laws have a bug-infested family cottage on a lake) for a week to catch up on sleep (you may have noticed a few more mental hiccups than usual on the blog lately) and do some writing. I plan to stay away from email and the Internet until Aug. 11. But before I go, I wanted to advance an idea: permitting voters to sign initiative petitions on-line.

In some states, there's already limited circulation by Internet. If a petition is formatted right, it can be emailed to voters, who print it out, sign it and send it in. That's fine, but I'd like to go further, permitting voters to add their names to ballot initiative petitions as they now do to other on-line petitions. For security's sake, the voters would have to provide more than just their real name. They'd have to give an address, an email, and a phone number that matches the number on their voter registration--a phone number where they could be reached to verify that their signature is authentic. 

In Colorado, state legislators are trying to head off a possible Humane Society ballot initiative that would require veal calves and pregnant pigs to be kept in housing that allows them to stand up and turn around.

Why the desperation to stop the Humane Society? Because when the society goes to the ballot, it usually wins.

No organization has a better record at the ballot than the Humane Society of the United States, the true champion of direct democracy. Between 1990 and 2006, HSUS won more than two-thirds of its ballot measure campaigns. (26 out of 38). In most of those efforts, the Humane Society has been on the "yes" side, and "yes" campaigns are far harder to win than "no" campaigns. (About two-thirds of ballot initiatives lose). At the ballot, the Humane Society successfully has sought to ban dove hunting, horse slaughter, cockfighting, and confinement of animals.

This morning' s Sacramento Bee has a story on all the foreign trips that California politicians took last year -- and the people who footed the bill. These trips are ostensibly about educating lawmakers on all sorts of issues, big and small But in years of talking to people who make these trips, I've never found anyone who has used their time abroad to study how other countries practice direct democracy.

They should. California has a budget and governmental crisis that, by broad consensus, stems from how the state uses initiatives and referenda to govern. Most of the countries on the destination lists of our state's political travels have some form direct democracy. It's a subject far more important to California than U.S.-German relations or the state of universities in Hong Kong -- both of them subjects of 2007 foreign trips.

Now comes news that a second initiative on development in Bayview-Hunters Point has qualified for the city of San Francisco’s June ballot. Check out this story in the Chronicle.

Why should people outside San Francisco care? Because in California and around the country, local ballot measures have become a common instrument of business-on-business warfare. Lennar Corp, a national development company based in Florida, first qualified an initiative that would put in place its Hunters Point development plan, which would include a combination of retail, industrial and residential development along with a new 49ers Stadium. In response, a San Francisco supervisor -- with backing from other developers -- has qualified this second initiative, which would impose a mandate that half of the new homes in the Hunters Point area be sold or rented at below-market rates.

Such battles have come to dominate municipal ballots in California. Look at ballots this June. Wal-Mart takes on local business in Long Beach. A hardware store owner is battling Home Depot in Thousand Oaks. In Anaheim a fight between a developer and Disney produced two ballot measures, though those were recently removed after the developer, facing legal problems and an onslaught from the Mouse, surrendered.