In his opinion piece in the Sept. 21 New Times (“The citizen-led initiative process strengthens our democracy”), Jeff Eckles said that the citizen initiative process is a hallmark of direct democracy. That may be true, but I respectfully disagree with Mr. Eckles’ argument because that is not the form of government instituted in this country. The United States has a republican government, based on representative democracy and a Constitution that protects minority rights.
The country’s Founding Fathers were most fearful of direct citizen control, which they associated with mob rule. They structured our government to prevent it. That is partly why they limited the vote to propertied white males. Over time, as the population has become better educated, the right to vote has been rightfully expanded. But we are still a representative democracy. As citizens, we vote for the people who make the laws. If we don’t like the decisions they make, we can vote them out of office.
Why is direct democracy a bad idea? Citizens are busy with their lives. We don’t necessarily have the interest or time to study complicated issues to make informed decisions. That is why we elect our representatives to do so. The citizen initiative process may sound like a good idea, but it tends to be a vehicle for special interest groups to enact laws that often are not in citizens’ best interests. It takes a lot of money to mount a successful initiative campaign, which is one reason most citizen initiative campaigns fail.
Mr. Eckles supports the initiative process because he is a signer of the citizen initiative campaign in Morro Bay to freeze the land-use designation for the old power plant site as visitor-serving. This is a good example of citizens having insufficient information. The promoters of this initiative have sold it as a way to stop Vistra’s planned battery storage facility. The initiative will not do that because Vistra can bypass local government and apply for a California state permit to build the facility. Also, much of the site is contaminated so that visitor-serving businesses cannot locate there without expensive remediation. We need to let our elected City Council continue to make land-use decisions for our community.
Marlys McPherson
Morro Bay
This article appears in Oct 26 – Nov 5, 2023.
Marlys McPherson’s myopic remarks are a direct attack on the working class in Morro Bay and an attack on democracy itself.
I agree that a weakness of direct democracy like the initiative process is the unwillingness or inability of many of the voters to adequately understand the effects and implications of the laws that they enact, which are often just distilled down to facile sound bites, and that our representatives are presumably in a better position to make these calls. However, our representatives can occasionally be corrupt or self-interested, which may distort their judgment. And, of course, the same frivolous popular sentiments that impedes our understanding of initiatives, also influences our choice of representatives. The initiative process is imperfect, but necessary.
The problem with the initiative system is that we often get conflicting results. For example, Californians have elected a supermajority of Democrats to the legislature. That legislature passed a law, AB5, that went directly after ride sharing apps such as Uber and Lyfft for not classifying their workers as employees, due full wages and benefits. Those companies, however, then spent several millions of dollars promoting Prop. 22 which basically eliminated Uber and Lyfft from compliance with AB5. Prop 22 passed, negating the work of the legislature.
Because of that, I tend to agree with Aristotle who was suspicious of direct democracy because the citizens simply were not well educated enough to make rational decisions.