The General Assembly didnt pass real lobbying reform, or real campaign reform, or real FOIA reform this year. The General Assembly hasnt (yet--I hope) finished passing the re-legalization of midwives. Lawmakers probably wont finish decriminalizing marijuana. Smarter Balanced Assessment was stopped in its tracks--for about an hour--until the Governor did damage control. Yet we could have passed all these things ourselves, if only Delaware adopted the practice of initiative and referendum. Initiative and referendum is something that lawmakers typically want no part of, because they are representatives, you see, and generally dont like the idea of direct democracy. With initiative and referendum, ordinary citizens can get proposed laws onto the ballot via the petition process, as occurs in California (among other states). Common Cause could write a campaign reform law and go out to collect signatures. The Delaware Association of Midwives could do the same; likewise the Cannabis Bureau of Delaware. Of course it can get a little chaotic, because the signature requirements have to be set low enough to be possible, which can allow for some strange things to hit the ballot, and there are always certain to be court challenges immediately following some of them. But in his latest book, Unstoppable, Ralph Nader argues that an alliance of libertarians, progressives, and conservatives at odds with the current broken two-party system, could find agreement on initiative and referendum as a way of breaking corporate dominance of public policy. Think what it would do for voter turn-out ... people come out to vote for or against such ballot initiatives with greater frequency than they do for candidates. In a modern world and a very small state (where people are rarely separated, Kevin Bacon-like, by more than a degree or degree and a half), initiative and referendum would give the Greens, the Campaign for Liberty, Common Cause, midwives, NORML, the Libertarian Party, the National Association for Gun Rights, and others the chance to make their case directly to their fellow voters. But direct democracy is, perhaps, too scary a thought for the corporate donors who have proven once again they control Delaware politics (and education) to ever allow it to happen.
Posted on: Sat, 28 Jun 2014 23:45:12 +0000
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