Blockbuster Democracy

SEOUL - Former U.S. Sen. Mike Gravel (D-Alaska), a 2008 Democratic candidate for president, has been the leading advocate of introducing the ballot initiative at the federal level in America. But, as Gravel told the 2009 Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy here Monday, he's been frustrated in his efforts in the U.S.
    So now, in an application of the maxim "If you face a big problem, expand it," Gravel has decided to take his idea for America to other countries. His search for "an alternative national venue" has brought him to Korea, with its relatively new democracy and constitution.
Gravel said he intends to work to convince Koreans to adopt a national ballot initiative power-and then build on that triumph to take the idea around the world. Gravel and the Korea Democracy Foundation have been working to educate Koreans on the subject. They're also conducting a national poll; if it shows support for the strong idea, advocates will press Korea's Election Management Committee to schedule an election - perhaps next year - on the subject.
    Gravel's proposal for a Korean National Initiative also creates a Citizens' Assembly and a "citizens Trust" to administer direct democratic elections.
    Gravel and other advocates have cleverly sought to appeal to national pride - particularly Koreans' record as successful exporters. Direct democracy, they argue, would be another Korean export.

SEOUL - Bruno Kaufmann - the globetrotting Swiss-Swede journalist who serves as president of the Initiative & Referendum Institute-Europe and is the driving force behind the global direct democracy forum here  -- trotted out a new term in his speech opening the conference: "Superdemocracy."
    That's his way of talking about the need to build "trans-national" democratic structure to give citizens real power in a globalized world. Kaufmann's argument: the global economic crisis was produced and managed by international forces not subject to democratic accountability. The world needs global democratic structures that blend elements of representative and direct democracy.
    In his words: "Furthermore, migration, globalization and the borderless digitalization of our spheres of communications indicate that our predominantly indirect and nation-state based democracies have to be upgraded-hence we are approaching what I would venture to call ‘Superdemocracy' - a democracy which is much more direct and much more transnational."
    There are few models for this sort of democracy. The best may be the transnational initiative that is part of the Lisbon Treaty, which provides a new framework for the European Union.
    Kaufmann set out four goals for the forum process.
1.    Creating a global inventory of direct democratic procedures and practices (and developing a common language to describe them)
2.    Developing a global curriculum and agenda for research in d.d.

Yes, said U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle last week in granting a preliminary injunction that keeps secret the names of voters who signed the petition demanding a refernedum on a Washington state law that grants virtually all the rights of married couples to domestic partners.

Settle's decision comes from his stated and understandable desire to protect those signers from the pressure tactics of gay rights groups, who have said they would target those who signed (just as advocates for and against same-sex marriage in California have sought to pressure donors to the campaigns for and against Prop 8). Gay rights groups are probably hurting themselves with this approach, and all sides in the dispute should be more respectful of those with whom they disagree. But this is a dangerous decison that does real damage to the first amendment and to the public's right to know.

Petitioning the government to overturn a law is not, in way shape or form, a private act. It's a legislative act, in fact. Such a decision could be used as a precedent to shield other legislative acts and attempts to influence the law from disclosure and scrutiny. Some contacts between the public and the government required privacy, especially when the public is required to give the government information (as in the case of taxes). But since the Declaration of Independence, signing one's name to a petition in this country has been a public act. Settle's decision is a terrible departure from our constitutional tradition. he should reverse himself before a higher court does it for him. .

Here's the prepared text of my short address on the state of direct democracy in North America, to be delivered Monday at the 2nd Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy in Seoul.
 
Greetings from the New World. 
North America is still the New World, when it comes to direct democracy.
 Yes, direct democracy, as one method of government dates to the earliest
European settlements in North America (and, some historians tell us, to Native American
civilizations before that). And yes, initiative and referendum has been part of our political
culture since the Populists and Progressives grew enamored of it in the 1890s. But the
news about direct democracy in North America is how new direct democracy remains
there. And because it still feels new, the process itself is not settled. It's hotly contested in
each country that welcomes initiative and referendum (and even in some countries that
don't).
 I look at this state of affairs in the same way I look at today's very difficult
economy. In the short term, we have big challenges. In the long term, we have big
opportunities. 
Elite opinion across the continent continues to be hostile to initiative and
referendum. Elites prize the sort of stability that keeps elites in power, and direct
democracy, for all the consensus and stability it has brought to Switzerland, seems a force
for instability on our continent.
In Honduras, a president was removed by the military - at the direction of the

The fight continues over signatures -- many of them originally ruled invalid -- on a New York City ballot initiative demanding a new investigation of the 9/11 attacks. A statement from the committee -- a collection of victims' family members, first responders (and some conspiracy theorists) -- pursuing the initiative is here.

Your blogger is headed to Seoul so he can report back from the 2nd Global Forum on Direct Democracy. Look for postings here. Details on the event are here. And all you direct democrats out there, please save this date: August 1-4, 2010, when I'll be hosting the 3rd Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy in San Francisco. Theme is: Constitution Making and Direct Democracy. More to come on that.

Citizens in Charge Foundation -- led by Paul Jacob, best known as leader of the term limits movement and as a member of the now free Oklahoma 3 -- is building what, in my experience, appears to be the first truly national organizing network around initiative and referendum.

In an email, Citizens in Charge says it now has 13 "Citizen State Coordinators" (the goal is to have someone in every state) to work to defend and expand initiative and referendum rights in the states. More about this here. Whatever you think of Jacob's politics, this is a smart move  that will encourage more thinking about direct democracy and, one hopes, more civic engagement.

I'm at UCLA today at the state's tax reform commission (the Commission on the 21st Century Economy) and will be twittering highlights for as long as I can stand it. at joemmathews.

The commission is supposed to make recommendations to the legislature (for an up or down vote) later this month, and two commissioners -- Stanford economist John Cogan, a Republican, and UC Berkeley law school dean Christopher Edley, a Democrat -- have made a presentation of a recommended package. Highlights: flatter personal income tax, phase out of state sales tax, elimination of corporation tax, establishment of a 4.2 percent business net receipts tax (BNRT), a form of value added tax.

The commission's recommended package also includes one ballot measure: a constitutional amendment establishing a stronger rainy day fund.

Those are the first numbers from the Washington state department of health after last year's passage of a ballot initiative that allows doctors to prescribe lethal medications to the terminally ill. The initiative took effect in March. Since then, 28 terminally ill people have received end-of-life prescriptions and 16 have died. (Hat tip: Seattle Times).

Move over, Denver extraterrestrial commission initiative. We have a new contender for initiative of the year.

Today a brother and sister, David Joseph Hyatt and Merry Susan Hyatt (and yes, that's how she spells her first name, and there's no story behind it, she says), filed a ballot initiative at the attorney general's office that is entitled, "Freedom to Present Christmas Music in Public School School Classrooms or Assemblies."

Your blogger, who enjoys caroling and attended a junior high that required everyone to sing "Let There Peace On Earth" at the end of the holiday pageant, was unaware that Christmas music was under threat. If so, the people should rise to the occasion and defend it. "Each public elementary and second school shall provide opportunities to its pupils for listening to or performing Christmas music at an appropriate time of year," says the measure. That may sound compulsory, but the initiative also requires schools to give parents three weeks' notice of Christmas music, and to allow them to opt out of having their children be a part of it.