Which view one takes often varies state by state and issue by issue the same people who might praise the initiative process when used to legalize medical marijuana might be critical of the process when it is used to ban same-sex marriage, and vice-versa.īecause ballot initiatives give any group the ability to pass a law quickly and without the likelihood of it being debated and amended to death in the legislature, there seems to be little desire to end or limit the practice, even among those who dislike some of the outcomes after all, if their political opponents can use the initiative process, they can too.

This can be seen in two ways, either as a positive thing in which citizens can make an end-run around a legislature that does not represent the actual majority view or in a negative way as either giving too much power to one unelected person (e.g., Eyman) or as enabling a majority vote to run roughshod over the rights of a minority as with Proposition 8 (or similarly Brexit in the UK).

Attempts by a few, such as former Senator Mike Gravel, to enact the right to initiatives and referenda at the federal level have found little support.Īt the state level, this form of direct democracy has become controversial in recent years due to the passage of such ballot measures as California Proposition 8, the presence on the ballot every election of initiatives proposed by libertarian activist Tim Eyman in Washington state, and the use of ballot initiatives in several states to legalize medical marijuana. This exists in some states in the United States, although not at the federal level. One form of limited direct democracy which exists in conjunction with representative democracy is the ability of citizens to propose new laws and collect enough signatures to put them on the ballot as a referendum to be voted on by the people. Since medieval times, this sort of democracy has been continuously practiced in some Swiss cantons in the form of a meeting called the Landsgemeinde.īallot initiatives and referenda This method is mostly found only in small countries and communities because a few people can take less time to decide than many people, and it takes time to count all the votes. Direct democracy ĭecisionmaking assembly in a Swiss canton.Ī direct democratic system is a system in which votes are directly counted by the people and action is taken. On the other hand, if your candidate loses in an obscure constitutional mechanism like the Electoral College, or if you're not part of the wealthy oligarchy that actually determines policy, then the distinction between a democracy and a republic might not seem so pointless. In fact, the United States is both a democracy and a republic - a representative democracy is sometimes also a republic (although not all republics are representative democracies). Those who say 'republic, not a democracy' might define democracy as the direct kind, not the representative kind they might claim democracy leads to mob rule. It was later used by Robert Welch, founder of the John Birch Society, to express his opposition to the Warren court actually applying the Bill of Rights to legal interpretations. The origin of the phrase in the US dates back to the 1930s when conservative anti-interventionists used it to oppose entrance into World War II. Republic, not a democracy Ī common exercise in pointless semantics involves labeling the United States of America as 'a republic, not a democracy' - as done primarily by partisans. Some countries have claimed the establishment of new kinds of democracy, including 'direct democracy', ' people's democracy', or ' organic democracy' most of the time, the leaders of these countries are slimeballs - or outright tyrants - who are trying to pull the wool over people's eyes, and their countries are actually totalitarian states. The parliamentary system is a version of representative democracy. Representative democracy (also referred to as a ' democratic republic', though not always correctly) is a system in which people choose and authorize representatives to make decisions. Not to be confused with political representation

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