Referendum

“ The more valuable part of the reform is undoubtedly the referendum. The initiative is hardly necessary, except by way of giving a referendum on measures which otherwise would not emerge from the legislature; and there is a growing inclination to give a referendum on all laws or measures involving a grant of a franchise or of a right or privilege at the expense of the general public, or the town or city concerned. ”

“ The referendum allows citizens who disapprove any act passed by the legislature to get up a petition against it and thus bring about a reference of the measure to the voters at the polls for approval or rejection. These two practices constitute a form of "direct government." ”

“ The Initiative and Compulsory Referendum are attempts to cure the evils which have developed in our practice of representative government by means of a return to the old, unsuccessful, and discarded method of direct legislation and by rehabilitating one of the most impracticable of Rousseau's theories. ”

“ I believe that we are upon the eve of recovering some of the most important prerogatives of a free people, and that the initiative and referendum are playing a great part in that recovery. I met a man the other day who thought that the referendum was some kind of an animal, because it had a Latin name; and there are still people in this country who have to have it explained to them. But most of us know and are deeply interested. Why? Because we have felt that in too many instances our government did not represent us, and we have said: "We have got to have a key to the door of our own house. ”

“ The above relationship between the two rights to vote on national referendum equally stands whether a policy matter is a matter of written constitution or of unwritten constitution, as long as that policy matter is one requiring constitutional revision. ”

“ The Initiative and Referendum.—As a corrective for the evils which had grown up in state legislatures there arose a demand for the introduction of a Swiss device known as the initiative and referendum. The initiative permits any one to draw up a proposed bill; and, on securing a certain number of signatures among the voters, to require the submission of the measure to the people at an election. If the bill thus initiated receives a sufficient majority, it becomes a law. ”

“ Favouring, as I do, real Democracy, and so believing that the Will of the People alone should prevail, and that we should get complete and unchallengeable sanction for the laws, I have always regarded the Referendum, or Poll of the People, as an essential corrective to the inconveniences and anomalies of the Representative System. The Popular Veto is, in my view, the essential antiseptic of the Constitutional Pharmacopeia. ”

“ The initiative is that phase of democracy which makes it possible for the infuriated mob, under the leadership of the demagogue, to enact legislation.
The referendum is that phase of democracy which assumes that the minority should rescind impulsively at a special election the deliberate action of the majority at a regular election. ”

“ The signatures of 25,000 citizens are necessary in demanding a referendum, proposing a new law, or amending the existing laws. The budget and measures affecting war, peace and foreign treaties cannot he submitted to a referendum. ”

“ The initiative is a means of seeing to it that measures which the people want shall be passed,—when legislatures defy or ignore public opinion. The referendum is a means of seeing to it that the unrepresentative measures which they do not want shall not be placed upon the statute book. ”

“ Most of our advocates of direct legislation by the people assume that a great mass of law-making would result in practice; probably the contrary is true; the referendum would destroy more than the initiative would create. They would go back to a condition of things which, in theory at least, existed in the England of the early Saxon times; although, of course, in those days only the freemen, and no women, had the law-making vote. ”

“ People say the initiative and the referendum, against which I have talked, are like a ratchet wheel. If you extend power to the people and the voters, you will never get it back again. I agree that is a rule that generally works, but with respect to the initiative and the referendum there is an element that may cause an exception to the rule. The initiative will throw a heavy burden on the electorate. Cranks and their followers will constantly be compelling voters to act upon wild proposals. ”

“ The referendum will then be limited to such matters as the legislature chooses to refer and will then cease to be a practical burden.
We must pray that the injurious excesses which I have been describing as the cost we have to pay for a great reform, may not unsettle the foundation of our government and destroy the self- [Pg 101] imposed restraint arranged in the Constitution to make that government just to the individual, to the minority and to those who do not vote. ”

“ Views identical with the foregoing are held by many Socialists, and therefore a Socialist writer has asked: "Why cannot the people, even of a populous and extensive country, vote upon all laws?" [596] "Instead of representation we shall have what is technically called the referendum, or submission of all proposed measures to the people, who must signify their approval by vote before the measures can pass into law. ”

“ The first remark to be made upon this wonderful barrier is that a general election avowedly cannot be trusted as a true referendum. It produces a balance of members in favour of one party, though even this may fail to be realized at no distant future, but the balance of members may be and has been under our present system in contradiction to the balance of the electors; or in other words, a referendum would answer the vital question which party is to govern, in the opposite sense to the answer given by a general election. ”

“ An ordinary law of the Commonwealth will also suffice, if one of the States affected does not consent, provided that the change of boundaries or the creation of a new State is desired by the population concerned and is also required by a preponderant national interest.
The wishes of the population shall be ascertained by a referendum. The National Cabinet orders a referendum on demand of one-third of the inhabitants qualified to vote for the National Assembly in the territory to be cut off. ”

“ Eight per cent of the legal voters have the right to propose any legislative measure and 15 percent of the legal voters have the right to propose amendments to the constitution by petition. A referendum may be ordered, except as to laws necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health or safety, either by petition signed by 5 per cent of the legal voters or by the legislature as other bills are enacted. ”

“ The most forcible objection which can be made is that you ought not for the sake of avoiding a particular evil to introduce an innovation of dubious expediency. The objection itself is valid, but it is in the present instance inapplicable. My conviction is that the introduction of the Referendum, in one shape or another in respect of large constitutional changes, would be a distinct benefit to the country. It affords the one available check on the recklessness of party leaders; for the check is at once effective and in perfect conformity with democratic principle and sentiment. ”

“ It reveals a fear of the exercise of the Referendum that experience in other countries does not justify. With the wide franchise allowed in the Constitution, the tendency will be to play into the hands of political parties, and one of the purposes of the Referendum is to destroy the power of political parties. ”

“ A (popular) referendum will take place only if the desired law has not been adopted by the People’s Chamber in a version with which the petitioners or their representations are in agreement.
(5) A (popular) referendum shall not be held on the budget, on tax legislation or on salary schedules.
(6) A law submitted to a (popular) referendum is considered as adopted if it has received the consent of a majority of the votes cast.
(7) A specific law shall regulate the procedures for popular initiative and (popular) referendum. ”

“ Any person who, without or against the lawful order of the Commission, holds or causes the holding of a referendum on a day other than that fixed by law or by the Commission, or stops a referendum being legally held, or who holds a referendum not legally authorized ”

“ Final ratification by the people shall be accomplished by a simple majority of votes cast in a popular referendum, provided that a minimum of twenty-five percent of eligible voters of age eighteen years and over have cast ballots within the nation or country or within World Electoral and Administrative Districts. ”

“ Right to Vote on National Referendum upon Decisionmaking concerning Relocation of Capital As examined above, when the President is obligated to submit a particular policy to the national referendum, the citizens have the right to request submission of that policy to the national referendum and the right to vote on national referendum encompassing such right, even prior to the President's submission of that policy to the national referendum. ”

“ They are a Self-emancipated People.
Reviewing the foregoing, it is seen that the pledges for installing the referendum system were secured by questioning candidates, while the system itself is through rules of procedure, which may be incorporated in the rules themselves or in an ordinance or statute. The system is the advisory referendum, the candidates being pledged to carry out the people’s advice. ”

“ The Initiative and Referendum scheme will have its own enemies, who will fear that this way may be an entering wedge for more Initiative and Referendum amendments to be pushed into State constitutions. ”

“ But direct nominations favor notoriety and wealth. The referendum is a conservative rather than a radical measure; it can, however, be used to advantage as an educational method when all are concerned and interested. ”

“ I believe that it would be a good thing to have the principle of the initiative and the referendum applied in most of our States, always provided that it be so safeguarded as to prevent its being used either wantonly or in a spirit of levity. In other words, if the legislature fails to act one way or the other on some bill as to which there is a genuine popular demand, then there should unquestionably be power in the people through the initiative to compel such action. ”

“ Article One When the importance of certain laws warrant it, or if public interest demands it, the Head of State may, for the better service of the nation, submit to referendum the Bills (draft laws) drawn up by the Cortes.
Article Two The referendum shall be extended to all men and women of the nation over the age of twenty-one years. ”

“ Therefore, by the own nature of the national referendum, the 'confidence the public has in its representative' cannot be a subject matter for a national referendum and the decision of and the confidence in the representative under our Constitution may be performed and manifested solely through elections. ”

“ The Westminster Review, speaking of the referendum, expresses this opinion:
“The bulk of the people move more slowly than their representatives, are more cautious in adopting new and 404trying legislative experiments and have a tendency to reject propositions submitted to them for the first time.... The issue which is presented to the sovereign people is invariably and necessarily reduced to its simplest expression and so placed before them as to be capable of an affirmative or negative answer. ”

“ And where once the king reserved the right to veto and to initiate legislation, so now (as again in our Constitution) the people reserve the right to veto and to initiate legislation. And this is the plain and simple meaning of the two instruments of the Referendum and the Initiative, Their effect is to shift sovereignty from the parliament to the people, where the revolutions of the 17th and 18th ^ centuries shifted sovereignty from the king to the parliament. ”

“ A popular referendum shall be held upon an initiative proposal and in such other cases as are provided for in the constitution; it shall be valid only if a majority of the qualified voters participate therein. ”

“ If there is any doubt as to what the people of the country think on this vital matter, the clear and single way out is to submit it for determination at the next election to the voters of the nation, to give the next election the form of a great and solemn referendum, a referendum as to the part the United States is to play in completing the settlements of the war and in the prevention in the future of such outrages as Germany attempted to perpetrate. ”

“ A successful attempt to bestow upon legislative bodies, composed of such doubtful material and subject to such equivocal traditions anything resembling complete governmental responsibility, would be a dangerous business. Legislatures have degenerated into the condition of being merely agents, rather than principals in the work of government; and the strength and the propriety of the contemporary movement in favor of the initiative and the referendum is to be attributed to this condition. ”

“ A democracy, according to them, can with less risk give itself a strong executive, if it also includes among them his right to call a referendum in case of conflict, which would thereby enable the people to rule on the conflict. ”

“ In some of these referendum states, whose legislatures are included among your claimed thirty-six ratifiers for the Eighteenth Amendment, the whole of the state legislature has not yet ratified, because the citizens of the state, who are part of its legislature, have not yet acted. ”