Direct Action Democracy

A charismatic lawyer who made a name for himself taking on corrupt city bosses, Hiram Johnson ran for governor of California in 1910 as the anti-politician.  “I am not a politician,” he told a crowd one sunny morning in Palm Springs, “so I am not trying to pose as one.”   At 44, he’d never run for or held any public office, or been even remotely involved in politics.  But Johnson, and his wealthy allies (most of whom were dissident Republicans), had a vision for California.  They wanted to take the power away from the special interests (primarily the railroads), and give it back to the people.  They wanted to let the people legislate directly.

Johnson enjoyed a thumping victory in 1910 and California would never be the same because of it.  Once in office, he acted quickly in calling for a special election and asking voters to enact 23 amendments to the state Constitution.  Johnson campaigned for months on end in support of these measures, the most prominent of which were a trio of direct action democracy mechanisms.  They were:

Californians approved all of Johnson’s measures, with the direct action democracy amendments garnering resounding super-majorities — over three-quarters of voters approved the referendum and initiative measures.  In one fell swoop, Johnson had fundamentally changed the structure of California politics and government forever.

But was it a good thing?  The question cuts to the core of an ideological divide in this country, one that we have grappled with for hundreds of years.  Can there can be too much democracy, an “excess of democracy”?  Should specific interest groups and ordinary citizens have the power directly to make law?  “The best argument against democracy,” wrote Winston Churchill, “is a five minute conversation with the average voter.”

But “average voters” are not the problem, or at least not the whole problem.  In recent years the initiative process has been too often hijacked by large corporations (sometimes foreign), corporate interest groups, and lone billionaires — all the same groups whose wherewithal and organizational advantages already enable them to exert substantial influence in the legislative process.  Most recently, tax-exempt religious organizations have forced their way into the fold.  Many of these groups have no real connection to California and often use the state as a “petrie dish” for pet projects, or as a means of retaliation, with little, if any, real regard for the interests of Californians.  Fraud and voter deception pervade the process, and ballots are often overly complex and confusing.

Of course, special interests play arguably an even larger role in representative politics.  Rather than passing too much legislation, experienced legislators, in a partisan political climate, often suffer from the opposite problem:  they can’t pass any at all.  By the time all the backroom dealing is over, and all the compromises and accommodations are made, legislation is typically so watered down and so shot through with exceptions, and exceptions to the exceptions, that the statute’s original purposes can no longer be detected, let alone effectuated.

The people must have some direct voice in the system of legislation.  But their voices must be administered in an orderly fashion, and they must assume much greater responsibility for the consequences.  How do we combine professional checks and balances with the dispatch of direct democracy?  How do we get things done, without getting bogged down in the process?    How do we minimize the influence of powerful, unrepresentative special interests so that “average voters” can be heard in the first instance?

Ideas for reform abound, but no firm action has been taken.  In 2000, Assembly Speaker Hertzberg formed a commission to study and recommend changes, setting forth four main objectives:

Former Assembly member Hanah Beth Jackson argues that we need to make sure initiatives are,

. . . based upon legitimate California issues expressed by real Californians and funded by the people. We can start at the beginning of the process: requiring that signature gatherers be California residents and not transients; that false representations of what these initiatives say is a felony; that funding for these signature gatherers must be through sources directly in California and that no initiative can be repeated within a certain length of time of a similar subject matter measure that was voted on in a past election.

Most importantly, in light of the budget mess in California, there should be new curbs on ballot initiatives that mandate spending for popular programs without identifying new tax dollars to pay for them.  We recommend the New American Foundation’s California Group for updates and ideas on California direct action democracy reform.

CPPA’s Task Force is currently considering specific proposals to make sure that our system of direct democracy first set up by the legendary Hiram Johnson, works for the people and not against them, which may involve, to some degree, protecting the people from themselves.  We’ll be publishing more specific recommendations shortly.

Aaron T. Knapp

Executive Director

Center for a Postpartisan America

postpartisanamerica.org