The U.S. elections prompted many observations internationally about the political system and the election process, including the drect democracy at play in the form of ballot initiatives at the state level. The following article presents a view from the U.K. on that subject. - editor
It'll get interesting when the Americans start voting
The undercard for the US elections may be dragging - but the main event will be unmissable, argues Chris Game.
Oct 31 2008 Agenda
Source: http://www.birminghampost.net/comment/birmingham-columnists/agenda/2008/10/31/it-ll-get-interesting-when-the-americans-start-voting-65233-22157493/
My political boredom threshold is probably higher than most of yours, but I confess: I’m bored with the American election.
True, my boredom is purely temporary. Come the early hours of Wednesday November 5, and I’ll have exchanged my late night Stateside TV viewing from the baseball World Series to the state-by-state exit polls and Presidential predictions.
Can Obama really win big? Or will enough voters, privately in their polling booths, be sufficiently scared of the man’s programme, personality or pigmentation that, despite everything they’ve told opinion pollsters, they’ll go for the other guy?
Whatever the outcome, it will be absorbing, important and historic – but for now the main feature’s a bit of a drag. With US elections, though, there’s always a full supporting programme.
There are thousands of other elective offices at stake, but for me, better than all this representative stuff, is the raw direct democracy on offer. Voters in 36 states will give their views on 153 ballot propositions, initiatives and referrals. They themselves become policy makers on issues great and small, in a way that our governments rarely, if ever, trust us to be.
They will determine how taxes are raised, how major investment projects are funded, and whether their states should have lotteries, casinos, greyhound tracks, same-sex marriage, stem cell research, and liberal or restrictive abortion laws – while we struggle to have a say on the future of our central library.
Just as Sarah Palin’s candidacy has taught us at least where Alaska is and the kinds of things Alaskan rednecks like to do there, so a study of these propositions can inform us about aspects of America that would rarely otherwise attract our attention.
A majority of the 153 measures have been placed on the ballot paper by state legislators themselves. Most are not actually called referendums, but that’s what they are: issues or bills referred to electors for approval or veto before they become law.
There are, though, 61 propositions or initiatives that have forced their way on to the ballot paper following successful citizens’ petitions, in which campaigners seeking to change their state’s law or constitution have collected a specified number of validated signatures.
The biggest categories of propositions, as always, are those on taxes (24) and bond issues (16). But, contrary perhaps to expectation, not all the former are for tax reductions, nor do the tax cutters invariably win – especially if a worthy-sounding cause can be attached.
Thus a proposal to raise Minnesota’s sales tax rate is labelled ‘The Clean Water, Wildlife, Cultural Heritage and Natural Areas Amendment’ in an unsubtle hint of the ecological depredation that could result from voters withholding their tax dollars. Likewise, Colorado has a citizens’ initiative, ‘Sales Tax for the Developmentally Disabled’.
More conventional are the state income tax propositions. The North Dakota chapter of Americans for Prosperity want theirs cut, while the Massachusetts Committee for Small Government want their 5.3 per cent rate abolished completely.
But not even tax cuts are necessarily self-seeking. An Oklahoma constitutional amendment, for example, seeks a property tax exemption for disabled veterans and their surviving spouses.
Municipal bonds are a fund-raising device many of our local government leaders ogle with undisguised envy, constrained as they are by our shackling Treasury Rules. If their US counterparts need capital for schools, highways, hospitals, airports or whatever, one option is to get voters to approve a bond issue – reminding them that, if they themselves invest, their interest income will be exempt from federal income tax.
Californian voters alone have three bond issues to consider: $10 billion towards a high-speed 800-mile rail link between San Francisco and Los Angeles, and nearly $1 billion each for children’s hospitals and a fund assisting veterans to become homeowners.
Lotteries and casinos are other ballot regulars, and again proponents will emphasise the more morally uplifting causes that will gain from, say, extending casino hours to 24/7 and increasing maximum bets.
Thus the real beneficiaries of an Arkansas state lottery will apparently be the student recipients of college scholarships. And, if Colorado citizens agree to loosen gambling restrictions, the true winners will be everything from highway improvements and health care programmes to alternative fuels and the state minimum wage. Then there are the social issues, particularly interesting where they relate to UK practice. Perhaps most topical of all – given the recent cases of multiple sclerosis sufferer, Debby Purdy, and 23-year old rugby player, Dan James – is Washington state’s ‘Aid in Dying’ initiative.
Modelled on the now well-established practice in neighbouring Oregon, the proposal would allow mentally competent, terminally ill adults to request and administer a lethal overdose of medication.
Oregonians over the years have voted on more ballot propositions (350) than any other Americans. Among this year’s 12 measures is a proposed ‘Kids First Act’, under which teachers’ pay rises and job security would be based not on seniority, but on their classroom performance. Controversial certainly, but not remotely on the scale of abortion. In the US a woman has since 1974 had the constitutional right to have an abortion, but her state’s provision, or lack of it, will effectively determine her access to a clinic. Nowadays, most ballot propositions aim at further restricting availability. In California an emotively entitled ‘Sarah’s Law’ – after a 15-year old who died following a mishandled abortion – would prohibit abortion for minors until 48 hours after the physician has notified a parent or legal guardian.
More inventive and potentially far-reaching is a Colorado initiative attempting in effect to criminalise all abortion, through an Equal Rights constitutional amendment re-defining a ‘person’ as any human being from the moment of fertilisation. The implications seem massive – including for emergency contraception, IUD forms of contraception, and stem cell research – and it will surely be the most carefully watched of all this year’s proposition votes.
Finally, no examination of US direct democracy would be complete without mention of animal welfare, of which Americans are in some respects significantly more protective than we are.
A Massachusetts initiative thus proposes closing down the state’s two greyhound tracks and banning all dog racing for money. And a California proposition calls for an end to battery chicken farming and the crate-rearing of calves and sows.
Alaskans, though, as we have learned, view things differently: ‘wildlife is for us, and blasting things indiscriminately is the Alaskan way of life’. In an early statewide ballot just three days before Governor Sarah Palin was unveiled as John McCain’s running mate, Alaskans voted decisively to reject the Wolf and Bear Protection Act and continue the aerial hunting and shooting of free-ranging wolves, wolverines and grizzly bears.
You can guess which way the Governor campaigned and voted. But then, as my mother used to say, it would be a dull world indeed if we were all alike.
* Chris Game is lecturer at the Institute of Local Government Studies, University of Birmingham.
Source: http://www.birminghampost.net/comment/birmingham-columnists/agenda/2008/10/31/it-ll-get-interesting-when-the-americans-start-voting-65233-22157493/
My political boredom threshold is probably higher than most of yours, but I confess: I’m bored with the American election.
True, my boredom is purely temporary. Come the early hours of Wednesday November 5, and I’ll have exchanged my late night Stateside TV viewing from the baseball World Series to the state-by-state exit polls and Presidential predictions.
Can Obama really win big? Or will enough voters, privately in their polling booths, be sufficiently scared of the man’s programme, personality or pigmentation that, despite everything they’ve told opinion pollsters, they’ll go for the other guy?
Whatever the outcome, it will be absorbing, important and historic – but for now the main feature’s a bit of a drag. With US elections, though, there’s always a full supporting programme.
There are thousands of other elective offices at stake, but for me, better than all this representative stuff, is the raw direct democracy on offer. Voters in 36 states will give their views on 153 ballot propositions, initiatives and referrals. They themselves become policy makers on issues great and small, in a way that our governments rarely, if ever, trust us to be.
They will determine how taxes are raised, how major investment projects are funded, and whether their states should have lotteries, casinos, greyhound tracks, same-sex marriage, stem cell research, and liberal or restrictive abortion laws – while we struggle to have a say on the future of our central library.
Just as Sarah Palin’s candidacy has taught us at least where Alaska is and the kinds of things Alaskan rednecks like to do there, so a study of these propositions can inform us about aspects of America that would rarely otherwise attract our attention.
A majority of the 153 measures have been placed on the ballot paper by state legislators themselves. Most are not actually called referendums, but that’s what they are: issues or bills referred to electors for approval or veto before they become law.
There are, though, 61 propositions or initiatives that have forced their way on to the ballot paper following successful citizens’ petitions, in which campaigners seeking to change their state’s law or constitution have collected a specified number of validated signatures.
The biggest categories of propositions, as always, are those on taxes (24) and bond issues (16). But, contrary perhaps to expectation, not all the former are for tax reductions, nor do the tax cutters invariably win – especially if a worthy-sounding cause can be attached.
Thus a proposal to raise Minnesota’s sales tax rate is labelled ‘The Clean Water, Wildlife, Cultural Heritage and Natural Areas Amendment’ in an unsubtle hint of the ecological depredation that could result from voters withholding their tax dollars. Likewise, Colorado has a citizens’ initiative, ‘Sales Tax for the Developmentally Disabled’.
More conventional are the state income tax propositions. The North Dakota chapter of Americans for Prosperity want theirs cut, while the Massachusetts Committee for Small Government want their 5.3 per cent rate abolished completely.
But not even tax cuts are necessarily self-seeking. An Oklahoma constitutional amendment, for example, seeks a property tax exemption for disabled veterans and their surviving spouses.
Municipal bonds are a fund-raising device many of our local government leaders ogle with undisguised envy, constrained as they are by our shackling Treasury Rules. If their US counterparts need capital for schools, highways, hospitals, airports or whatever, one option is to get voters to approve a bond issue – reminding them that, if they themselves invest, their interest income will be exempt from federal income tax.
Californian voters alone have three bond issues to consider: $10 billion towards a high-speed 800-mile rail link between San Francisco and Los Angeles, and nearly $1 billion each for children’s hospitals and a fund assisting veterans to become homeowners.
Lotteries and casinos are other ballot regulars, and again proponents will emphasise the more morally uplifting causes that will gain from, say, extending casino hours to 24/7 and increasing maximum bets.
Thus the real beneficiaries of an Arkansas state lottery will apparently be the student recipients of college scholarships. And, if Colorado citizens agree to loosen gambling restrictions, the true winners will be everything from highway improvements and health care programmes to alternative fuels and the state minimum wage. Then there are the social issues, particularly interesting where they relate to UK practice. Perhaps most topical of all – given the recent cases of multiple sclerosis sufferer, Debby Purdy, and 23-year old rugby player, Dan James – is Washington state’s ‘Aid in Dying’ initiative.
Modelled on the now well-established practice in neighbouring Oregon, the proposal would allow mentally competent, terminally ill adults to request and administer a lethal overdose of medication.
Oregonians over the years have voted on more ballot propositions (350) than any other Americans. Among this year’s 12 measures is a proposed ‘Kids First Act’, under which teachers’ pay rises and job security would be based not on seniority, but on their classroom performance. Controversial certainly, but not remotely on the scale of abortion. In the US a woman has since 1974 had the constitutional right to have an abortion, but her state’s provision, or lack of it, will effectively determine her access to a clinic. Nowadays, most ballot propositions aim at further restricting availability. In California an emotively entitled ‘Sarah’s Law’ – after a 15-year old who died following a mishandled abortion – would prohibit abortion for minors until 48 hours after the physician has notified a parent or legal guardian.
More inventive and potentially far-reaching is a Colorado initiative attempting in effect to criminalise all abortion, through an Equal Rights constitutional amendment re-defining a ‘person’ as any human being from the moment of fertilisation. The implications seem massive – including for emergency contraception, IUD forms of contraception, and stem cell research – and it will surely be the most carefully watched of all this year’s proposition votes.
Finally, no examination of US direct democracy would be complete without mention of animal welfare, of which Americans are in some respects significantly more protective than we are.
A Massachusetts initiative thus proposes closing down the state’s two greyhound tracks and banning all dog racing for money. And a California proposition calls for an end to battery chicken farming and the crate-rearing of calves and sows.
Alaskans, though, as we have learned, view things differently: ‘wildlife is for us, and blasting things indiscriminately is the Alaskan way of life’. In an early statewide ballot just three days before Governor Sarah Palin was unveiled as John McCain’s running mate, Alaskans voted decisively to reject the Wolf and Bear Protection Act and continue the aerial hunting and shooting of free-ranging wolves, wolverines and grizzly bears.
You can guess which way the Governor campaigned and voted. But then, as my mother used to say, it would be a dull world indeed if we were all alike.
* Chris Game is lecturer at the Institute of Local Government Studies, University of Birmingham.
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