Description

“Direct democracy permits individual citizens to make choices about specific policy issues. However, direct democracy raises serious concerns about the ability of referendum to address complex policy issues, the role of money in the voting process, the loss of democratic debate and the hindering of rational policy making. Given the experience with direct democracy in other jurisdictions (e.g., California), we believe that its role should be very limited and carefully structured. It should not be used for general policy decisions manageable by representative democracy, such as the desirable level of taxes.”