Direct Democracy Essay
Direct democracy is where the people vote directly on the laws. The problem with this is rational ignorance, where cost outweighs the benefits. There are three kinds of direct democracy: recall, initiative, and referendum. It happens in four stages: preparation stage, qualifications stage, voting stage, and the implementation stage. Direct democracy is only good because people get what they want and many innovative ideas happen at the ballot box. It’s bad because there is budgeting at the ballot box as well. There are also good ideas that are bad in practice, the “lock-in effect”, which is when the only way to change a bad proposition is with another proposition, misleading propositions, few checks and balances if any that only the Supreme
…show more content…
The secretary of the state could help write ballot measures and the Supreme Court could preemptively rule out propositions. The legislature should also get involved during the implementation stage to stay “in the spirit of the law”. There should also be an unpaid volunteer quota requirement as well as no more taking from general revenue. Money must be raised by themselves. A time limit should also be in place after passing where the legislative can fix it. In addition, initiatives should be easier for people to understand and harder to introduce. They need to be short and to the point. These initiatives need to state the cost and where the money will come from. According the article “Lessons from California: The perils of extreme democracy”, if this is successful, “initiatives must be subject to amendment by the legislature.” This would good for referendums as well.
In Van Vechten’s “California Politics: A Primer”, he lists several problems that California faces. But what do I personally think California ought to make to address these problems? First of all, what are the problems he lists? Well, Van Vechten believes that education, immigration, environment, poverty and income inequality, business and labor, drought and water, and transportation are all issues in California that need to be addressed (Van Vechten 148). I’m only going to address a couple of
The secretary of the state could help write ballot measures and the Supreme Court could preemptively rule out propositions. The legislature should also get involved during the implementation stage to stay “in the spirit of the law”. There should also be an unpaid volunteer quota requirement as well as no more taking from general revenue. Money must be raised by themselves. A time limit should also be in place after passing where the legislative can fix it. In addition, initiatives should be easier for people to understand and harder to introduce. They need to be short and to the point. These initiatives need to state the cost and where the money will come from. According the article “Lessons from California: The perils of extreme democracy”, if this is successful, “initiatives must be subject to amendment by the legislature.” This would good for referendums as well.
In Van Vechten’s “California Politics: A Primer”, he lists several problems that California faces. But what do I personally think California ought to make to address these problems? First of all, what are the problems he lists? Well, Van Vechten believes that education, immigration, environment, poverty and income inequality, business and labor, drought and water, and transportation are all issues in California that need to be addressed (Van Vechten 148). I’m only going to address a couple of