State Lawmakers Defying Will Of Voters
In November South Dakota voters approved a ballot measure revising the state’s campaign finance and lobbying laws to create a public campaign financing program, limit campaign donations, create an independent ethics commission and ban gifts from lobbyists. But last week lawmakers there were preparing to repeal that law on an “emergency” basis, which would prevent voters from undoing their work with another referendum.
“It’s a real stick in the eye of the people of South Dakota,” said Liz Kennedy, director of the Democracy and Government Reform program at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. “It’s one thing when it’s a policy change like minimum wage, but this is the voters saying ‘our government is not working for us right now,’ and the government is saying ‘we reject the rules that you have imposed on us.’“
South Dakota isn’t the only state where public officials are defying the will of voters. Over the past couple of years, Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) has repeatedly refused to release funds voters approved for conservation and housing programs because he disapproved of those programs or wanted to leverage legislative approval for other programs. And now he’s trying to get lawmakers to block initiatives passed in November raising the minimum wage and increasing taxes on wealthy residents to provide additional funding for public education, which he says aren’t legally binding.
“The legislature doesn’t even have to enact it,” he said of the minimum wage hike in December. “This is a recommendation to the legislature of what the people are feeling.”
Although some ballot measures are advisory, generally they are legally binding. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that last year when it rejected the Arizona Legislature’s effort to block a citizen initiative turning over redistricting to an independent commission. But that ruling hasn’t even stopped lawmakers there from backing a lawsuit to block another ballot measure approved in November increasing the state’s minimum wage.
“It’s pretty blatant, this attempt to shut down citizens’ voices and their role in direct democracy,” said Kellie Dupree, communications director for the progressive Ballot Initiative Strategy Center. “You don’t get to decide which election results you’re going to accept. I would go so far as to say it’s lawlessness.”
Catie Kelley, an attorney for the Campaign Legal Center, said the lawmakers’ actions threaten the whole citizen initiative process.
“The whole idea of having ballot initiatives is that there’s some vehicle for voters to move a policy if lawmakers are unwilling to move it themselves,” she said. “If lawmakers are going to repeal it, or undermine it through the administrative process, it’s really a lost tool for voters.”
Craig Burnett, an assistant professor of political science and an expert on ballot measures at Hofstra University, said there’s a long history of governors and lawmakers opposing citizen initiatives, which undermine their authority, but the “outright defiance” of voter-approved measures is something new, possibly the product of a political climate in which there’s a greater willingness to bend the rules to achieve the desired results.
Some states make it harder for lawmakers to tamper with voter-approved measures. For example, Alaska and Wyoming prohibit the repeal of such laws for at least two years, and Arkansas and Nebraska require a two-thirds vote of their legislatures to amend or repeal them.
Initiative backers can also make their proposals more difficult to change by drafting them as constitutional amendments rather than statutory measures. In fact, Burnett said, “Policy entrepreneurs are going to learn from this and not use statutory initiatives as much.”
And voters have the option of removing lawmakers who defy their will from office. (GOVERNING, SIOUX CITY JOURNAL, BALLOTPEDIA)
