The Colorado State Capitol building in Denver, the home of the Colorado State legislature and governor offices. (yosoynuts/Flickr)
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On Election Day 2016, Coloradans passed Amendment 71, raising the threshold needed to amend the Colorado Constitution. Supporters claimed that out-of-state, moneyed interest groups flocked to Colorado every November to put their political messaging to the test. Opponents argued that citizen-led initiatives are a fundamental, democratic right.
Supporters were right, and won the argument at the ballot box. Before Amendment 71, the Colorado Constitution had been amended more than 150 times. In between outlining the structure and responsibilities of government, entire sections are dedicated to explaining how to properly clip goats’ ears or ventilate mineshafts. In 2008, voters almost considered whether to constitutionally mandate a sex strike in opposition to the Iraq War. Two years later, Denver shot down a measure that proposed the city fund tracking of UFO sightings.
One problem with referring measures to a vote of the people is that the longer ballots are, the fewer people vote. Raising awareness for issues, no matter how righteous the cause, depresses voter participation. The even bigger problem, however, is that people are unsure of what they are voting on. Considering candidates is easier than unpacking lengthy proposals, especially when you’re voting on the fly.
The Gallagher Amendment is the quintessential example of complicated policy-making forced upon voters. Passed in 1982, the amendment basically lowered property taxes, thus also lowering the revenue for local governments and school districts. Ten years later, voters approved the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), prohibiting the State Legislature from raising taxes without a vote of the people. Gallagher slashed funding for education and TABOR crippled the state’s ability to respond. So presently, despite a booming economy, Colorado falls behind forty other states in its support for education, placing it, internationally, between Chile and Turkey in per-pupil spending.
Many supporters of Amendment 71 pointed toward Gallagher and TABOR as justification for raising the threshold for future constitutional amendments. On Nov. 8, 2016, the majority of Coloradans agreed.
But this past Valentine’s Day, a federal district court judge ruled that half of Amendment 71 violated the United States Constitution. Specifically, Amendment 71 requires that future ballot initiatives collect at least two percent of signatures from registered voters in all thirty-five of Colorado’s state senate districts before the initiative can be placed on the ballot. Colorado’s senate districts are roughly equal in total population, but vary significantly in their populations of registered voters. In district 21, for example, an initiative would require 1,610 signatures to make the ballot, but in district 23, the initiative would require 2,644. Thus, voters in district 23 have roughly 60 percent of the voting power as do voters in district 21. The court ruled that Amendment 71’s disparities in voting power violate the 14th Amendment, which has traditionally safeguarded the “one person, one vote” principle.
Opponents of Amendment 71, including those who drafted the lawsuit, championed this decision as a victory for the democratic right to initiate change. This has been their prevailing argument, and a formidable one. After all, how do those of us who supported Amendment 71 argue against democracy? But I think it’s time for Coloradans to interrogate the virtue of that democratic right from a consideration of its consequences. Just because something is democratic does not justify its permanent continuance. Democracy is the reigning norm, but it is hardly perfect.
Paradoxically, the American “democracy” is more undemocratic than it is actually democratic. The Electoral College, cloture, bicameralism, representation, checks and balances and the Supreme Court all smother your democratic right to govern yourself. Ballot initiatives and referenda, which exist only at the state and local levels, are as democratic as it will ever get for you. Now, you can argue that the above-mentioned institutions should be done away with, that citizen-led initiatives should be expanded, but first consider some of the problems with direct democracy.
Ballot initiatives are presented overwhelmingly by only one group, forcing voters to either accept or reject a position rather than sending it to the legislature where a compromise might be found. This, too, is the problem of democracy: no compromise, just the unfettered will of the majority.
More importantly, nearly half of the five hundred plus pieces of legislation considered by the state legislature each year are corrections made to address unanticipated consequences of previous legislation. Legislation is wrought with problems, it’s normal, and that’s why we fix it. But save for drafting another constitutional amendment, the initiative process doesn’t allow for necessary corrections to be made to any previous amendments. Change is stagnated in perpetuity, all because the voice of the people is eternally incontrovertible.
This is government-by-referendum. This is direct democracy. Overwhelmingly, people are unsure of what they’re voting for, but voice their opinions anyway.
In 2015, Public Policy Polling found that 30 percent of Republicans supported bombing Agrabah, while 36 percent of Democrats opposed military action. Why do a solid third of both major political parties not only not know that Agrabah doesn’t exist (it’s the city in Aladdin), but more seriously why would they invent a policy on an issue they clearly know nothing about? Tom Nichols observed that this is America’s tragic paradox: a reliance on hierarchies and repulsion by them.
To be fair, some hierarchies are bad. For most of human history, egregiously immoral ones persisted between master and slave and between man and woman. But some hierarchies are good: teacher and student, parent and child, doctor and patient and legistor and constituent. A distinction must be made between good hierarchies and bad ones, but democracy isn’t making that distinction. Democracy is deconstructing all hierarchies, and apparently we’re okay with that.
Doctors don’t know better than patients, because the internet told me vaccines cause autism. Legislators don’t know better than constituents, because they’re all crooks anyway. But this rejection of hierarchies is coupled with a reliance on them. Prescribe me something to fix my hypertension, but don’t tell me that I need to eat right or exercise. Fix Colorado’s education system, but don’t raise my taxes.
Boulder voted overwhelmingly against Amendment 71 at the time it was introduced, de facto support for the democratic right to sideline the virtues of representative government.
Maybe you believe that you are smarter than your legislators on so many political issues that your democratic right to initiate change should be preserved. And, to be fair, maybe you’re right. But I hope you can agree with me that not everybody is smarter than their legislators, or at least that not everybody has the time to consider lengthy, complicated policy proposals with the same level of commitment as do their legislators. For that reason, you ought to consider relinquishing your democratic right for your own good and the good of the community.
Maybe you disagree with me. Maybe you feel that people are so thoroughly perfect in their decision-making that they never have and never will commit self-destructive behavior. But then you’ll need to explain to me why two-thirds of Americans are overweight, why one-third of Americans haven’t written a will, why tobacco is still a marketable product, why the anti-vax movement is gaining ground and why climate change is inevitable.
Regardless of the outcome of Amendment 71, I hope that we can take the larger step of acknowledging that the true value of the American system is not in democracy, but in representation. Let’s get back to cherishing that.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Henry Bowditch at henry.bowditch@colorado.edu.
