CLOSER TO HOME

With 313,000,000 people, the United States is the third largest population in the world, after China (1,347,350,000) and India (1,210,193,422).  With 37,300,000 people, California, where I live, would rank 34th if it were an independent country, with slightly fewer than Poland and half-a-million more people than Algeria in the ranking. The United States of America, with it’s executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government, is a representative democracy.  However, since 1911 California has been a direct democracy with the initiative, referendum, and recall process functioning as a fourth branch of government.  Most California historians agree that originally, the initiative process was established to check the growing influence of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company and other special interests with the state legislature.  

Initiatives proposals on the ballot need only a simple majority to become law, and in California most of those that have changed or established laws and amended the constitution passed by very narrow margins. The initiative process has been used by California voters to lower property taxes and to increase taxes on tobacco.  Voters have reinstated the death penalty and abolished affirmative action. Medical marijuana was recently legalized and term limits for elected officials were imposed.  In states with representative democracy, those changes can be made only by legislative action.  

Whether statutes are changed by legislation or by initiative, they must be judged to be consistent with the state constitution.  In California, if the constitution is a stumbling block, the initiative process can change that as well.  However, the Supreme Court of the United States, if it agrees to hear arguments, renders final judgment based on the Constitution of the United States, and that constitution trumps all state constitutions, no matter how they were formed.   A recent proposal in California is a good example of what can happen when a state with direct democracy makes a law through the initiative system.  After a ruling by the Supreme Court of California, based on an equal protection argument, made same-gender marriages legal in the state, an initiative known as Proposition 8, which had tremendous support from religious institutions and wealthy individuals with strong ties church ties, was put before the voters.  By a slim majority the voters reversed the court’s ruling and made marriages between same-gender couples once again illegal.  The language of Proposition 8 states that “only marriage between a man and woman is valid or recognized in California.”  Same-gender marriages that had been contracted between June and November of 2008 were put in legal limbo until a ruling based on a constitutional grandfathering provision stated that those marriages would remain valid and legal. Whether or not Proposition 8 stands the scrutiny of the United States Supreme Court remains to be seen. 

Proponents of direct democracy argue that citizens should be able to exercise political power by overriding any and all government officials.  The argument is made that without the initiative process elitists in government routinely disregard the wishes of ordinary citizens, “the will of the people.”  Defenders of the initiative system say that citizens are at least as competent as government officials to make important policy decisions.

The original intent of the switch in 1911 from representative democracy to direct democracy in California was to limit the influence of special interest groups. A hundred years later exactly the opposite result is occurring routinely as more and more issues explained in deliberately abstruse language are presented in every election for voter approval or rejection. With blatant disregard for the rights of Individuals and minorities who may be hurt if an initiative is approved, powerful lobbies representing special interest groups with virtually unlimited funding are buying the conditions their wealthy clients want. Money is power in American culture politics, and interest group money is the power that dictates election outcomes where forms and limits of government are decided through the initiative process.  Ordinary voters for whom the initiative process was originally intended have virtually no control.

Of California’s 37,700,000 people, more than six million citizens of the Golden State live below the federal poverty line of $22,113 for a family of four.  That statistic is creeping steadily toward one fifth of the population.  If money is power, the poor are powerless because they have absolutely zero discretionary money. To argue that the poor and powerless are poor because they haven’t tried hard enough is an absurd response to very real problems of deprivation and suffering, especially the plight of children trapped in conditions of abject poverty.  The great majority of us don’t see the suffering.  Most of us go through the cycles of living without ever touching or being touched by the people who are truly poor. The great majority of California’s citizens who vote in elections do not live below the poverty level.  Of course, many of the individuals who are part of the more comfortable financial middle class of citizens go through periods of struggle; but a child’s experience of living in a struggling middle class family and the experience of a truly poor child are very different. The difference is one of expectation and hope. Middle class children tend to believe things will get better. Polls show that 16% of children in California say they don’t expect life to get better for them. 

The point of today’s journal writing is that the initiative, referendum and recall system is not designed to do anything at all about the plight of our poorest citizens.  The system serves the people who can “initiate” the process, and the poor cannot do that.  Only representative democracy with a responsible, healthy system of government designed to meet the needs of all citizens will ever reach out to meet the needs of the poorest citizens.   Responsible government does the right thing for all people, acknowledging that among the poor are some shiftless, thoughtless, careless and lazy persons who don’t make the effort to help themselves or their children... just as there are among the idle rich some who came by their financial good fortune without working for it.

Tomorrow... Karen Armstrong’s effort to create a Charter of Compassion