How did a Mythical Swiss Man, the Founding Fathers and a socialist Catholic priest help form the political landscape in the United States?
After the Supreme Court Dobbs ruling invalidating Roe v. Wade, I watched with growing envy as voters in many states were able to protect women’s reproductive rights through various forms of citizen initiatives and referendums. Why don’t Texas voters (where I live) have the right to force citizen initiatives onto the state ballot? I asked myself.
The answer lies in something called “direct democracy,” which includes the recall, the referendum (citizens voting to approve or reject a law), and the initiative. The initiative means that ordinary citizens like you and I can band together, develop a petition, get a certain number of other voters to sign up, and force a measure onto the public ballot. What a luxury!
The Origins of “Direct Democracy”
We all know that, in the way wayback, the Greeks, particularly in Athens, enjoyed a form of democracy (off and on) with participation open to adult males who owned property, but not to women or slaves—or the poor. But, for the beginnings of modern “direct democracy,” we must, it seems, thank William Tell.
Lake Lucerne, Switzerland
Remember William Tell, the proud Swiss hero whose Austrian overlord forces him to demonstrate his famed prowess with a bow and arrow by shooting an apple off the head of his young son? After Tell succeeds, the infuriated lord demands to know why Tell had taken up two arrows instead of one. Tell replies that, if the bow shot commanded by the lord had harmed his son, he would have killed the lord with his second arrow. The legend was popularized by a play by Frederich von Schiller and an opera by Rossini.
William Tell was a myth, but his representation of the Swiss passion for freedom was authentic. The geography of the Alps didn’t lend itself to centralized control. Thus the cantons of Switzerland never permanently coalesced into one nation ruled by an established monarchy. Even when they were part of the Holy Roman Empire, local communities ruled themselves, a custom which was solidified in 1291 with the establishment of the Swiss Confederacy. The process of Landesgemeinde meant that the people met in mass assemblies and decided their own fate.
The Founding Fathers looked closely at the Swiss form of government when they were developing the US Constitution. They admired Swiss local militias which repelled outside aggression without subjecting the cantons to the expense and possible danger of maintaining a standing army, but they believed the Swiss union of cantons was too loose to serve as a model for America.
When Switzerland began to adopt representative government in the 19th century, the people didn’t quite trust their new leaders and wanted to retain more control by requiring that laws passed by their representatives would be submitted to the people for approval, although in some cases only a certain threshold number of voters could demand the right to vote on a particular law. The initiative was developed at the same time to give the citizens the opportunity to propose a law.
“I & R” (Initiative & Referendum) Go West
In the late 19th century, the Swiss institution of the referendum and the citizens’ initiative began to look appealing to Americans who had become increasingly dissatisfied with their own state governments. The reform movement for what is called “I & R” triumphed first in South Dakota, of all places.
Dakota Territory went through a violent boom and bust cycle in the 1880s. By 1884, farmers were beginning to complain that it cost them more to grow their wheat than they could get for it at market. They fought the railroads and other monopolies and demanded legislation favorable to farmers, but the politicians, businessmen, lawyers and land speculators who dominated the Republican Party passed laws that appeared to protect farmers but always had loopholes that benefitted the bosses instead.
It was a Roman Catholic priest, Father Robert W. Haire, the first Catholic priest in Aberdeen, South Dakota, who came up with a homegrown concept of initiative and referendum (I & R). Haire was quite the rabblerouser, distrusting the “plutes,” his name for plutocrats. He gave a lecture in 1888 declaring, as reported in the Aberdeen News, that, if the laboring masses did not “have possession,” a “bloody rebellion would certainly be the result.” His bishop tried to send him elsewhere. When Haire refused to leave Aberdeen, he was allowed to remain a priest but not to administer the sacraments.
Haire came up with the idea that citizens should be able to propose laws directly and bypass a legislature controlled by “a few pinheads and trading representatives of the Vanderbilt-Gould type.” By 1898, when South Dakota’s only Populist governor Andrew Lee was reelected, I & R was on the ballot, supported by all the political parties, and passed by a wide margin.
Haire’s idea spread quickly across the West. Utah voted in I & R in 1900, Oregon in 1902, Montana in 1906. But the movement was not confined to the West. In 1907, Oklahoma made I & R part of its first state constitution. Michigan embraced I & R in 1908, and California put both procedures into its constitution in 1911. A number of other states followed. But a handful of states put “direct democracy” on the ballot only to see it defeated. Texas, sadly, was one of those states.
The Chance Not Taken
In 1914, during the height of the Progressive Era, Texans had one chance to grab the golden ring of “direct democracy,” which would have granted Texas voters I & R. But too many voters were wary, for good reasons and bad ones. The political carousel in Texas keeps on going around and around, but that golden ring has been out of sight ever since.
An early enthusiast for direct democracy in Texas was Thomas Benton King, who was elected county judge of Erath County in 1894 as a member of the Populist Party. In 1897, King founded a local publication called Direct Legislation based on the national Direct Legislation Record, in which he said he would “work for a restoration of all political power to the people by the Initiative, Referendum and Recall.”
A much more powerful advocate for “I & R” in Texas was the august Morris Sheppard, a US Congressman from 1902 to 1912 and US Senator from 1913 to his death in 1941. Sheppard supported a state constitutional amendment providing for I & R statewide, which passed the Texas Legislature in 1913.
But by the time Texans voted on the amendment on Nov. 3, 1914, Sheppard had gone on to the Senate and, like most voters across the country, was focused on supporting two enormous issues which, at the time, dwarfed all others: women’s suffrage and Prohibition. In the end, the vote was close but I & R failed the only time it came up for a vote in Texas by a margin of 48% to 52% or 62,371 for and 66,785 against.
Why didn’t Texans vote for direct democracy when they had the opportunity? For one thing, according to the terms of the amendment, initiative and referendum petitions would have to be signed by 20% of the qualified voters of Texas, a much higher percentage than the number required by any of the states that had previously voted to install I & R. Some progressive voters thought they might get a better deal with a revised proposal in the future that would make it easier to pass a citizen initiative.
Many conservative voters didn’t want to risk rocking the segregationist boat, fearing that Black voters might be able to use I & R to challenge the existing system. Jacob F. Wolters, Texas legislator, failed candidate for the Senate against Sheppard, and later brigadier general of the Texas National Guard, declared in 1912, “The initiative and referendum as a substitute for representative government found its birth in the ranks of the Socialist Party,” which no doubt Wolters saw as the kiss of death.
Why would Texans want to vote for anything that was borrowed from socialism?
on October 27, 1920
It’s also very important to remember that only men could vote in Texas in 1914. Women were approved to vote in Texas primaries in 1918 and achieved full suffrage across the country in 1920. Would it have made a difference if Texas women had voted in 1914? Once they could vote, women did support many progressive reforms, such as public schools, federal funding for maternal and child healthcare, and increased spending on other social programs.
Whatever the reasons, as the public’s attention turned to whether to finally allow women in the voting booth and whether to eliminate alcohol from American life, the opportunity slipped away. The Texas Legislature has never again approved a similar ballot measure.
The On-Going Battle
Just to make the whole story a little stranger, some cities in Texas, including Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas among others, do offer voters initiative and referendum rights with regard to local ordinances. In fact, in 2015, voters in Houston voted down a city ordinance that banned discrimination based on 15 protected characteristics including sexual orientation and gender identity. The ordinance was defeated by a margin of 61% to 39% largely because of a campaign that played primarily on fears of men disguised as women lurking in women’s bathrooms. Eek, eek. The right to I & R does not always give the victory to reformers.
status in the United States.
Source: Wikipedia
Republicans who dominate states where I & R options do exist are now busy looking for ways to oppose or frustrate citizen initiatives, sometimes even after the majority of the populace have voted and clearly demonstrated what they want. Republican legislators have tried to pass measures overriding an I & R vote, increase the number of signatures required to validate a citizen’s initiative, or pass measures or amend state constitutions to require that a citizen’s initiative must reach the signature threshold in each legislative district or in a high proportion of legislative districts, which would doom many reform measures.
No political battle is ever permanently won. Those voters who do have the privilege of direct democracy must be ever alert to protect their rights. As for hapless Texans…gaining direct democracy at this point would require a sea change in our politics, a complete pineapple (or pecan) upside-down cake. Whether the state is absolutely ruled by Southern Democrats, as in the olden days, or by Republicans these days, those who have complete control are unlikely to give the voters any opportunity to countermand their rule.
For more information about I&R and Direct Democracy in the United States check out these links below:
Direct Democracy in Action: A Guide to State Ballot Measures
Ballotpedia: Initiative & Referendum
The History of the Initiative and Referendum Process in the United States
Wikipedia: Initiatives and referendums in the United States
