[EM] Initiatives

[Daniel Davis]

    SIR:

    As the writer of an initiative that garnered more signatures than needed, and
was thrown out by the judicial system for being "unconstitution",--well I am
still angry about that.

    Does the judicial system have a right to throw out an initiative (with valid
signatures, following all regulations) because it feels it is unconstitutional?



dd

New Democracy wrote:

> Greetings,
>
>      There must be ways in which elected officials can be held accountable.
> One way is when they face re-election. Another way is recall. These two are
> not enough to make our lawmakers accountable. There are two other ways that
> need to be added before we will have the best accountability of our
> lawmakers.
>
>      One is that the citizens should have the means to petition for a
> referendum, so that the citizens can pass laws that the lawmakers refuse to
> pass or laws that the lawmakers are not allowed to pass. The second way is
> for the citizens to have the means by which they can change or veto any
> measure that was passed by any one of their levels of government.
>
>      We the citizens must think of our elected officials as our employees.
> We have the right to correct our employees and the right to change any
> decision they may have made. In most cases of disagreement we the people
> would be more willing to change a decision of a lawmaker than to recall the
> lawmaker. We the people should have this option.
>
>      In regard to accountability, these two improvements in government are
> more important than proportional representation - more important than any
> other election reform. Even before we gain full representation(PR) in our
> voting for lawmakers, these two improvements will work very well by
> themselves to give us accountability.
>
>      The voters of any currently existing district should be able to
> petition to have a House measure put to a vote in their district. The
> district vote could be taken before or after the House vote. If the people
> voted different than their representative, then one vote on the measure in
> the House has been changed. As more votes get changed from other districts
> the measure could lose enough votes to void the measure. Not all districts
> need to vote on the measure.
>
>      Proportional representation is good and I hope it is installed in my
> country, but it will not give us the level of accountability that we need.
> The power to change the vote of the lawmakers has far more power to make
> the lawmakers accountable. More so than re-election by proportional
> representation or recall or the media and other forms of public scrutiny.
>
>      These two improvements are the first two principles of Direct Democracy.
>
>      Maybe Direct Democracy should change its name to Accountable Democracy.
>
> Regards,
> Donald Davison
>
>      \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
>      ///                 N E W    D E M O C R A C Y                ///
>      \\\ Home of Citizen's Democracy   http://www.mich.com/~donald \\\
>      /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////



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