Educated by Initiative: The Effects of Direct Democracy on Citizens and Political Organizations in the American States

2. The Education of Citizens: Voting

2 The Education of Citizens Voting Of all the secondary effects that might be derived from citizen lawmaking , Progressive Era reformers most often singled out how the process could directly boost electoral participation. Following the strong-party era during the Gilded Age, when levels of voting participation reached historic heights, turnout began dropping precipitously at the start of the twentieth century. During what political historians alternatively refer to as the Fourth Party system or the postparty era, voter turnout outside the one-party, Democraticdominated South fell by nearly 15 percent in presidential elections between 1896 and 1916. Structural barriers to participation—such as the abolition of party-line voting; party registration laws; the prohibition of fusion (listing candidates under multiple party labels); literacy tests; poll taxes; and the desynchronization of local, state, and national elections—were frequently blamed for the waning rates of voter turnout.1 A generation later, Progressive reformers took up the Populist mantle and began pressing for a series of institutional arrangements that could help forestall the decline in turnout among an increasingly disengaged electorate. Reform-minded scholars, such as Professor Delos Wilcox, lamented at the time, “The curse of our politics is apathy .”2 In addition to home rule and a commission form of local government , the short ballot, the direct primary, direct election of U.S. senators, and nonpartisan elections, advocates of good government touted the initiative and referendum as mechanisms that could generate excitement at the polls. Wilcox and other reformers of the day averred that the use of ballot initiatives would strengthen democracy 31 by encouraging a more engaged and participatory citizenry.3 They were optimistic that the substantive nature of ballot measures would impel citizens to go to the polls, as the process enabled citizens to participate directly in the formulation of public policy. A century after the adoption of the initiative process in 19 American states, participation has reemerged as an important theme in civic discourse, as policymakers and social commentators search for more democratic and collective mechanisms for sending signals to government.4 U.S. voter turnout continues to decline, with only half of registered voters casting ballots in the 1996 and 2000 presidential elections and little more than a third casting votes in the 2002 midterm election. Voter turnout rates in the United States are among the lowest in the advanced industrialized nations.5 Political observers are again turning to direct democracy mechanisms in hopes of increasing electoral participation. Boosting citizen participation is a primary goal of contemporary progressives, who propose to update our electoral system with such reforms as Internet voting, same-day voter registration, absentee and mail ballot voting, and motor-voter registration, among others.6 Some reformers have suggested that states leading the way in ballot initiatives may well be the ‹rst to allow Internet voting and online voter registration.7 During the 1990s, with the explosion in the use of direct democracy , political observers began to note that the presence of initiatives on the ballot might positively affect turnout rates in the American states. Some referred back to the celebrated June 1978 case of Proposition 13 in California, where turnout of registered voters exceeded 69 percent in the primary election and more than 350,000 more ballots were cast for or against the tax-cutting initiative than the combined total received by all the Republican and Democratic gubernatorial candidates.8 Other commentators, such as Republican insider Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative, national, nonpro‹t organization, touted the puissance of initiatives, especially in turning out partisans for candidate contests.9 Still others pointed worldwide, where the use of initiatives and referenda dramatically increased, partially in response to demands for more participatory models of governing consistent 32 EDUCATED BY INITIATIVE with the new information economy.10 Proponents of citizen lawmaking , along with a host of democratic theorists, continue to contend that the act of voting directly on policy questions may increase citizen participation and turnout at the polls. They argue that allowing citizens to act as lawmakers heightens their interest in politics and the supply of information about elections.11 Even staunch critics of direct democracy, such as Washington Post columnist David Broder and Peter Schrag, the former editor of the Sacramento Bee, concede that citizen lawmaking promotes electoral participation.12 But does it? We assess in this chapter the Progressive Era proposition that citizen lawmaking bolsters voter turnout...