Most importantly, we the voters would be more likely to study and question the issues and to arrive at our own opinions, rather than to have them spoon fed to us by the corporate media.
Not only must we increasingly talk about the issues over the back fence or in the break room, we must also insist that the Fairness Doctrine eliminated by the Reagan-appointed Federal Communication Commission be resurrected to require fair comment and competing points of view by ordinary voters to be aired for all to hear.
Instead of responding emotionally to brief television and radio ads, most of which are designed to evoke a negative reaction, we would be far more likely to thoughtfully consider positive information and political analysis.
A number of countries, including Canada, Sweden and Switzerland refer policy matters to their voters for binding decisions, and the European Union resulted from a referendum in the participating countries. During its 2004 presidential election, Taiwan submitted two policy questions regarding its relations with China to voters. However, no nation presently holds a non binding policy referendum as a matter of course.
There are those who might argue that the presidential election is a referendum on the candidates’ platforms; however, the winner-take-all results do not, in any way, suggest the level of voter support for any of the competing issues. The outcome turns far too often on which of the candidates makes the fewest mistakes or which has devised the most effective smear campaign.
A National Policy Referendum will not be a national opinion poll. The process of articulating the political questions, the more lively debate, and our thoughtful vote will validate the results far beyond that attainable by any random sampling, no matter how scientific. Voters will not be expressing a snap opinion. Nor, will voters make law. Voters will make policy!
A right to vote in a National Policy Referendum can be found in the First Amendment to the Constitution, which expressly provides our right to petition our government for redress. Our right to peaceably assemble and to seek redress was intended as the bedrock of our free society and as a safety valve to avoid violent revolution.
In a free society, we have a duty to avoid the use of force, even if we believe our existence under ineffectual government is being seriously threatened. It is also our duty to peacefully petition our government, before we resort to violence.
If we are to effectively modify our government through a peaceful political evolution, we must be allowed to exercise our vote in a National Policy Referendum. Otherwise, what can we do?
A Peaceful Write-in Protest
As effective as a national referendum may be to establish government policy, little good will come of it unless those we elect are forced to pay attention to our interests and to actually carry out our policies. As it is, presidential candidates say one thing and do another to the extent they believe they can get away with it, and because of party politics, we keep getting stuck with having to decide upon the lesser of two evils.
Imagine if we combined a National Policy Referendum with a grass-roots rebellion in which a majority of us were to actually write in the name of the person we wanted to preside over our government. Wouldn’t we seize the power that legitimately belongs to the citizens of this country and wouldn’t we evolve a far more effective and representative government?
Can we trust the current method by which we elect our president? Are there good reasons why we should rebel against the present system?
In 2000, more than a half million voters selected Al Gore, the Democratic candidate, over George Bush, the Republican candidate. However, Bush prevailed in the Electoral College because a fraudulent election in Florida gave him that state’s 20 electoral votes, even though the candidates were only separated by a few hundred popular votes.
Bush had an edge and the fix was in. His brother, Jeb, was governor and the Secretary of State chaired his reelection committee. Not only were thousands of eligible (mostly Democratic) Florida voters disenfranchised before the election, but every effort to manually recount the ballots, including thousands of rejected votes, was blocked by the Secretary of State.
A phony riot was staged by Republican Party operatives flown in from out of state to intimidate local election supervisors, and five Republican-appointed members of the U.S. Supreme Court contrived a politically-motivated decision that reversed a far more reasoned opinion by Florida’s high court, which had ordered that every voter’s intention be determined as accurately as possible.
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