California's broken and abused initiative process: Using direct democracy to take away rights

California's initiative process allows Californians to enact legislation directly through ballot initiatives. An initiative measure requires a certain number of signatures to quality (5% of the votes cast for the last gubernatorial election for a statute, 8% for an amendment) and then a simple majority to pass. Once a process that was meant to ensure that power be kept away from wealthy political machines controlling our state legislature, it has now become a process controlled by wealthy political machines, many from out-of-state, who have the financial resources to put self-serving initiatives on the ballot and shell out large amounts of propaganda to the masses. Without any controls on what kind of information those campaigns put out, they often misrepresent the impact of those initiatives in an attempt to woo voters, as so many of us witnessed during the Prop 8 campaign.

In the fight for marriage equality, we could have a measure that amends the constitution with a new definition of marriage whenever it gets enough signatures to qualify, which seems a little ridiculous to me. A legal status such as marriage, a status on which the validity of other legal documents is based, should never be put up to a popular vote. It undermines the stability of our government and our legal system, and because the right to marry the person of one's choice is a fundamental right that is aligned with our constitutional right to the pursuit of happiness, Prop 8 was nothing but an egregious attack on the dignity and happiness of our fellow Americans.

People have been complaining about California's initiative system for a while now and how it is easier to write discrimination into our constitution than to pass legislation that will help alleviate our crumbling infrastructure. It seems great in theory because it embodies "popular sovereignty," but it is one of the reasons why California has become so difficult to govern. Once government can no longer govern effectively and no longer works for the people, then this form of "democracy" truly fails, and the people become the victims of their own "tyranny," so to speak. Ironically, the initiative process violates the principles of republicanism, which was put forth by the Founding Fathers of our country and ingrained in the U.S. Constitution. According to Jules Tygiel, a professor of history at San Francisco State University and author of Ronald Reagan and the Triumph of American Conservatism,the initiative process was born out of liberal fears and frustration of elected officials and goes against true conservative ideals, as well as undermines our democracy:

At the behest of Progressive Gov. Hiram Johnson, the Legislature added the initiative, referendum and recall to the California Constitution in 1911.

As a rule, liberals, who feared corporate privilege and professed faith in the ability of the masses to govern, championed direct democracy. Conservatives, who advocated laissez-faire economics and feared the tyranny of the majority, opposed it. Johnson's father, Grove, derided supporters of direct democracy. "The voice of the people is not the voice of God, for the voice of the people sent Jesus to the cross," he admonished.

Many people are now coming to realize how broken and abused our initiative process is, including the Libertarian Party, who had this to say about Prop 8 on their official blog:

The Libertarian Party officially opposes marriage as an institution of government--both gay and straight marriages. "Government does not have the authority to define, license or restrict personal relationships," says the Party's platform. However, some Libertarians argue that until marriage ceases to become a government-licensed institution, there should be equality in it regardless of sexual orientation.

Regardless of the issue specifically with gay marriage, the problem with direct democracy in this case is that the people felt that they had a right to restrict, regulate, prohibit or limit the relationships of their neighbors, and in a system where the majority rule, it certainly was in their authority to do so.

This is not to say that direct democracy could never work, but it could only do so in a libertarian utopia that could also foster voluntarily socialism, societal anarchy or a number of other systems of order that rely on the perfect behavior of those governed. In order for direct democracy to work without violating the rights of others, those citizens who voted would have to have an absolute understanding of and dedication to property rights and individual liberty—something that is extremely unlikely to ever exist.

There is no place for any broad use of direct democracy in a free society because the majority does not always respect the rights of the whole. Even by a simple test against our platform, direct democracy does not stand up to the phrase: "No individual, group, or government may initiate force against any other individual, group, or government."

I have to agree that unless we live in a utopia where every single person respected each other as human beings and was informed and dedicated to upholding the rights of everyone else, direct democracy might not be a very good idea. I think our Founding Fathers had it right. So unless we want to continue down this path of our great state imploding on itself, maybe it's time for a little change.