Government and Freedom

James L. Busey

[Reprinted from a pamphlet announcing the founding of L.E.A.F.
(Land, Equality and Freedom) in 1974]

A peculiar feature of the political system of the United Stales national government is its unresponsive rigidity in the face of public clamor. Issues such as Watergate can go or for months or years without political solution. On both sides of burning questions of the day, proponents claim the support of public opinion, but there is no way to find out, officially and once and for all, what that so-called "public opinion" really is. For example, on the issue of busing school children to achieve racial integration, advocates of conflicting points of view can engage in a permanent screaming contest without visible governmental attention to the debate. If the general public does have a point of view about inflation, tax reform, export of food supplies abroad, amnesty for draft evaders, automotive safety devices, pollution controls, the Vietnam war of recent vintage, or a host of other intensely argued controversies, there is no way, other than indecisive private polling, whereby people can give direct voice to their wishes.

For an opportunity to express their views officially, and hopefully with some effect, voters must wait for elections, which are cemented into a two-four-year schedule, and for which everyone must wait until the constitutionally appointed time, meanwhile suffering the tensions and uncertainties of continuous unresolved public debate.

Even elections do not tell us what the people think of great national questions. The people vote on candidates, not questions, and it is only rarely that elections provide a remote clue to public views on subjects of public debate. Even constitutional amendments are approved indirectly by state legislatures or conventions, and not directly by the people -- and the device of special state conventions has only been used once in our history, when the 21st Amendment repealed the 18th.

The problem is that the United States national government is still locked into a pattern modeled after the 1776 British government of George III, In place of the English monarch, we provided for an indirectly elected president. We established fixed, scheduled elections for the presidential electoral college and for the U.S. House of Representatives (later adding the Senate, in 1913), and made no further provision for the direct expression of public opinion.

Well-run parliamentary governments of today, which have evolved far beyond the system of George III (which ours has not), can hold unscheduled elections when public outcry creates parliamentary instability, loss of support for the government, or general commotion around the country. For example, in Canada an issue like Watergate could not have lasted over one week without a call for new elections.

Within our separation-of-powers (or block-and-tackle) system, it may be difficult to adapt ourselves to parlimentary practices, and even these provide but an imperfect solution to the problem of accurately gauging public opinion and acting upon it.

What is missing from our eighteenth-century style government, is provision for some sort of national plebiscite or referendum whereby great national questions could be resolved and acted upon, one way or the other.

Initiative and referendum systems, which are presently available in California, Colorado, and about a dozen other states, can be abused and can encourage the placing on the ballot of a multiplicity of minor or detailed questions, thus confusing the voter more than enlightening the government regarding his or her wishes. However, it is possible to build in certain protections against this eventuality by requiring a high national percentage of signatures on initiative petitions, by providing that they must receive a certain minimum of names in each of a large proportion of states (such as two thirds or three fourths) and by putting word limits on the measures so proposed.

Given these precautions, the constitutional inclusion of devices for national intiative or plebiscite has much to commend it, and may go far toward improving the functioning and stability of our national democratic system.