This post originally appeared at https://www.badgerinstitute.org/the-perils-of-making-law-without-lawmakers/

Observers of initiative process in California, Michigan point out problems with process embraced by Evers

Would laws based on public petition campaigns and referendums do a better job of giving Wisconsin citizens a voice in legislation? Not necessarily, say observers in other states that have the process.

“It’s not direct democracy, really,” said Lance Christensen, a long-time legislative consultant and budget analyst in California. “It’s more of an oligarchy or plutocracy.”

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers has renewed his proposal that legislators allow themselves to be cut out of the process of making state law and permit bills to be passed or statutes to be repealed by petition and referendum, an idea that the Legislature’s leaders dismissed as dead on arrival. After Evers forced lawmakers into session to consider the idea last session, legislators dismissed the notion within minutes.

The governor pitched the idea, as he did in 2022, as a way to give citizens greater say in legislation.

Christensen, now president of California Policy Partners, a center-right policy research nonprofit, said that lawmaking by citizen initiative isn’t without its merits. “I’ve written two ballot initiatives from scratch,” he said. The pathway has been used in California for more than a century, and even proposals that have failed to attract enough signatures to go to voters in a referendum have compelled legislators to pay attention to particular issues.

But “it really is antithetical” to the basis of representative democracy as embodied in a citizen-elected legislature.

And, said Christensen, the process favors causes that can bring a lot of money and manpower to the signature-collecting process.

To make it onto the California ballot, backers of a proposed law must obtain signatures equal in number to 5% of the ballots cast in the previous gubernatorial election — well over a million signatures in California.

Most successful drives use paid signature collectors, said Christensen, and that costs from $7 to $20 per signature. “Do the math,” he said.

The reality is that those most able to afford or organize such an effort are public sector unions, he said.

The same dynamic arises in Michigan, which also has such an initiative-and-referendum process, said James Hohman, director of fiscal policy at the nonprofit Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

“If they’re going to spend millions of dollars to collect signatures, and if everyone is using paid collectors, is this really the will of the people?” he said.

There are other hazards to the process.

Christensen pointed to the 2008 proposition in which California voters handily barred any redefinition of marriage as anything other than one woman and one man. Afterward, some activists in favor of same-sex marriage exacted revenge on those donating to the initiative, with at least one prominent tech executive ousted. Prominent journalists called for widespread firings of proposition supporters.

“Almost to a person,” said Christensen, “anyone who donated more than $1,000 was persecuted.”

The names of those donating less than $100 to initiatives are not public information. But the state’s then-attorney general, Kamala Harris, released the names of all donors, including small-dollar ones, unleashing a wave of harassment.

“You scare a lot of people from participating in democracy,” said Christensen.

In Hohman’s view, the option to spur progress on issues that aren’t moving among legislators is in principle helpful. He pointed to a long-ago use of an initiative to remove anti-margarine laws from Michigan’s books — a reform legislators were reluctant to touch as dairy and seed oil interests duked it out. On the downside, an initiative to remove the state’s old Blaine Amendment, a measure meant to discourage Catholic schools, fell short, further entrenching the amendment and barring school choice.

“It doesn’t get interest groups out of politics,” he said, “but it does call the question on some things legislators won’t touch.”

In California,  it makes it hard to undo mistakes, said Christensen. Laws passed by referendum can only be altered by the same route, so a complex formula for allocating school aid can’t be fixed by the Legislature, even with a consensus that repairs are needed.

Seeing law-by-referendum in Florida during law school helped make up Adam Jarchow’s mind. “It’s all a bad idea,” said Jarchow, a two-term former member of Wisconsin’s assembly who now practices law in Clear Lake. He dismissed Evers’ push as simply frustration by the governor at his inability to sell his policies to the citizens’ elected lawmakers.

Evers cited the way in which proposed constitutional amendments, unlike laws, do not need his signature. Currently, proposed amendments passed by lawmakers in two successive sessions go to voters for approval without the involvement of the governor. Evers said lawmakers should be subject to bypass, too.

But that misunderstands the role of a legislature, said Jarchow. A recent constitutional amendment on crime victims’ rights, while popular, had flaws that were pointed out by both public defenders and prosecutors, said Jarchow. The involvement of the Legislature allowed lawmakers to fix the problems before the question went to voters.

Christensen sees California’s system — which in some years presents voters with 10 to 15 potential laws on the fall ballot — as not wholly bad. Still, his advice for the half of states that, like Wisconsin, have no such process is to not jump in.

“Anybody who doesn’t have it shouldn’t have it,” he said.

Hohman, too, was cool to the idea: “It’s been somewhat a force for good policy” in Michigan, he said. “That might be different in other places.”

Patrick McIlheran is the Director of Policy at the Badger Institute.

Any use or reproduction of Badger Institute articles or photographs requires prior written permission. To request permission to post articles on a website or print copies for distribution, contact Badger Institute President Mike Nichols at mike@badgerinstitute.org or 262-389-8239.

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