frogblog

Following the bundle of referenda ‘lost’ by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday, Reuters report Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein as saying:

“The election results should send a strong message that the voters are tired of having issues that should be solved by their elected representatives placed before them on the ballot.”

That’s not something you would hear in New Zealand and its worth reflecting that that is probably a good thing.

Calls for more voter power through citizen-initiated referenda are often based on the presumption that people will so value the opportunity to ‘take back the power’ that they will embrace, and therefore strengthen the legitimacy of, the whole exercise.

But the reality of too many ballots can be seen in California, where the frequency of both citizen and government-initiated ballots, has turned people right off the whole process. Feinstein’s challenge above explains why; the voters of California elect their legislators to make the decisions, in part, because it means they don’t have to worry about such things themselves.

The New Zealand experience is, of course, different because we have far fewer referenda. Here, there are regular calls for contentious issues to be ‘put to the people’.

The Green Party general position on referenda (we don’t yet have a policy) is that they should only be used rarely because they are a very blunt, easily-mistargeted instrument.

We have also argued that referenda should only be used when the outcome affects everyone equally. So a popular vote on, say, electoral reform is appropriate because, whatever the result, everyone will be equally affected.

By comparison, decisions that only really affect the rights of a minority should not be made through a majority vote. As Jeanette said at the time of last year’s Civil Unions vote in Parliament:

“The Greens do not support Don Brash’s call for a referendum on the Civil Unions Bill. It is not appropriate to invite New Zealanders to directly vote on whether or not a minority should be entitled to their human rights and equal treatment before the law.

“Even though the polls show that a majority support the Bill and that it would win a referendum, human rights are so fundamental that they cannot be dependent on majority decision making.�

Feinstein’s call above should also be kept in mind. MPs and political parties are elected to Parliament to do a job and general elections are the common sense time and place for the voters to decide whether they have done that job well.

You only have look at the poor turnout in NZ’s local body elections to see that if the stakes are perceived as being not very high, then people won’t bother to participate. Clearly, voting is something that you can have too much of.

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