In 2001, a group called "Citizens for U. S. Direct Initiatives" (CUSDI) drafted an alternate plan to introduce citizen initiative at the federal level. This rebuttal addresses the four main differences between NI4D and the proposed Citizens' Initiative Amendment.

• Difference in Scope

  The CUSDI plan is limited to federal issues and does not address state or local jurisdictions. There are a number of reasons why NI4D takes an all jurisdiction approach.

  • Suffrage

    Women stopped fighting for the right to vote only after they got it in all jurisdictions via a federal constitutional amendment. Citizen initiative is of the same importance as the right to vote because what is the use of suffrage if you cannot vote on the issues which affect your life? Imagine if women had won the right to vote at the federal level only and that some states still did not permit women to vote at the state or local levels. That would be strange, wouldn't it?

  • Opportunity cost

    Enacting citizen initiative at the federal level in any form is an enormous challenge. If the People are going to go to the trouble of amending the constitution, why not add direct democracy in all jurisdictions?

  • Initiative procedure reform

    State initiative procedures suffer from well studied flaws (e.g., California). NI4D includes a deliberative component (see Act, 3-I) to address poor drafting and a polling option for qualification (see Act, 3-F-2) to reduces the cost of qualification contingent on keen public interest. By adding direct democracy to all jurisdictions, citizens will gain the option of proposing initiatives to change state law under the superior NI4D procedures.

  • People want it

    Almost all opinion polls suggest that the People want the power of initiative.

  • More orderly lawmaking

    Suppose citizen initiative is available only at the federal level. There is such great demand for initiative that you will likely end up with many federal statutes for issues which should be dealt with at the state or local level. For example, in both Switzerland and California, there are procedural advantages for initiatives which modify the constitution in comparison to statute law. This has resulted in constitutions overburdened with provisions which are really of a statutory nature. A uniform implementation of direct democracy would permit state law to be implemented by state initiative and federal law to be implemented by federal initiative.

• Difference in Ratification Process

CUSDI presumed that the validity of the Philadelphia-II direct election plan to enact NI4D rests on the precedent of the de-facto ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1788. This presumption is incorrect. The right of the People to change their form of government is implicit and pre-existing. This right is axiomatic. In this respect, the Democracy Amendment merely acknowledges and codifies the Peoples' already pre-existing right to lawmaking by initiative. As evidence of the potency of this axiom, consider whether sixty million votes in favor of NI4D can be denied.

After expressing doubt in the Philadelphia-II election, CUSDI proceeded to argue that a federal-only initiative will attract so much support from state legislatures that the state legislatures themselves will demand an Article V constitutional convention to get federal-only initiative. CUSDI argued that federal-only initiative will be so popular with state legislatures that the expensive process of CUSDI working to pass resolutions by initiative state-by-state could be partially or completely avoided. This is not a bad strategy, but let us examine each step in their argument.

First of all, CUSDI argued vigorously that state legislatures will prefer a federal-only initiative. However, it is not at all clear that a federal-only citizen initiative will be significantly more appealing to state legislatures than an all-jurisdiction version. Many of the same arguments advanced by CUSDI in favor of federal-only initiative apply equally well to an all-jurisdiction version. To draw a historical parallel, would it have been more appealing to allow women to vote only in federal elections and leave states to decide women's state-level suffrage on a state-by-state bases? In any case, all these arguments are conjecture which cannot be evaluated until after the fact. At the time of writing, no state has passed a resolution in support of either proposal.

With respect to the constitutional convention, CUSDI described the Article V constitutional convention as "incontrovertible" in comparison to the Philadelphia-II direct election in which "many questions remain." This characterization seems premature, but any means of ratification is acceptable. An enactment of NI4D by Article V constitutional convention could be attempted concurrently with the Philadelphia-II election or at any time. Since the last attempt in 1996, NI4D has been simplified and refined. If past objections can be overcome then there could be a new push for a state-by-state enactment parallel to CUSDI's proposal. Finally, the sponsors of NI4D believe that NI4D is a better proposal than the proposal advanced by CUSDI; however, any kind of national initiative is better than none. The Philadelphia-II election, even if it fails to effect the ratification of NI4D, will succeed by educating the public about the possibilities of direct democracy. Taking a more optimistic position, all indications suggest that the Philadelphia-II election ought to work and direct ratification by the people gives us something more productive to do than beg for policy change from elected legislators. You are encouraged to exercise your inalienable right to choose your form of government at votep2.us.

• Difference in Method of Qualifying Initiatives

CUSDI criticized the use of petition as a means to qualify initiatives. If too many signatures are required then the cost of qualification can rise beyond the reach of most citizens. In California, petition qualification costs about $1 million, excluding all but the wealthiest Sponsors from proposing initiatives. On the other hand, if too few signatures are required then the electorate will be flooded with too many proposals.

CUSDI advanced citizen assembly as an unbiased, incorruptible way to qualify initiatives. Unfortunately, the details were not thoroughly specified. CUSDI cautioned that "someone must reuse this approach in practice to check or change the details long before the Convention finalizes the Amendment." CUSDI claimed that such a qualification process would "cost less than signature petitions." This might be true, but no comparison is made with NI4D's polling option for qualification (see Act, 3-F-2). A national poll can be just as accurate as any other qualification method and less expensive.

• Difference in Management of the Initiative Process

CUDSI argued that the only way to insure an unbiased legislative process is to avoid permanent staff. However, there is reason to anticipate that the Electoral Trust will faithfully serve as a fiduciary to the People. There are a variety of protections written into the Democracy Act:

• Trustees serve a single term and cannot be re-elected (Act, 4-B-2).
• Trustees can be removed from office in a recall election or if three-fourths of the Trustees vote for his or her removal (Act, 4-B-3).
• All Electoral Trust meetings are open to the public (Act, 4-B-5).

The question of corruption in the Swiss legislature is also worth examining because Switzerland offers direct democracy at all levels of government:

"It [a political campaign in Switzerland] is free," James Bryce wrote in Modern Democracies, "from even the suspicion of being used for private gain." The statement remains true today. Yet there are few checks of the type that in more corrupt states are deemed essential merely to restrain marginally the force of legislative malfeasance. Swiss members of the Congress fill out no forms disclosing their income and holdings, and release no tax records. Even their campaign spending is a private affair. Candidates normally (as a practice, not a legal requirement) report totals to the party but not the public. Nor are such figures leaked to journalists (Fossedal, 2002, p. 77).

In brief, CUSDI's assertion that "a randomly selected citizens group is our only known method of preventing external influence" likely reflects a lack of appreciation of the benefits of uniform, all-jurisdiction direct democracy rather than an actual limitation of institutions of representative government.

The Electoral Trust will provide a number of important administrative services which are central in nature such as voter registration (Act, 4-F-2); a legislative research and drafting service (Act, 4-F-3); a communication infrastructure to disseminate information about initiatives (Act, 4-F-4); technical consultants, support staff, and facilities as needed for the effective conduct of Hearings and Committee activities (Act, 4-F-5); and holding elections (Act, 4-F-6). That is to say, many of the services available to Congress must be made available to citizens to facilitate fair and deliberative lawmaking.

It is not clear how a citizen assembly under CUSDI would maintain a commitment to providing these services with a high degree of professionalism without permanent staff. That is not to say that citizen assembly is not an excellent idea. NI4D incorporates citizen assembly in a more limited and cost effective way as the Deliberative Committee (see Act, 3-I).

Other differences

NI4D was vetted pubilcally at the Democracy Symposium in 2002. CUSDI is the work of mainly one person starting back in about 2000 and has not been publically vetted.

Contact with CUSDI

We have been in contact with the creator of CUSDI. The two proposals are not in competition, but should be seen as two species of the same essential proposal.