“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,” declares Article IV, Section 4 of the United States Constitution. Courts have indicated that they are unwilling to enforce this clause, so it is up to Congress and state legislatures to protect it. Yet some 21 states allow new laws to be enacted without approval by the state legislature, thereby creating a loophole for corporations to spend tens of millions of dollars on elections while otherwise banned from doing so. This loophole is known as a ballot initiative. Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize recreational marijuana by short-circuiting their legislatures this way.
Michigan was on the road to economic recovery under its Republican legislature which held a 63-47 House majority after the 2016 election. Then Big Weed put its thumbs on the scale by placing a marijuana initiative on the ballot in 2018, spending millions to enact that Democrat-favored legislation. The predictable side effect was to knock out more than half of the Republican lead in the legislature, dropping its majority to 58-52 and electing Democrats to statewide offices. In the 2020 election, lacking a similar ballot measure, the balance of power remained unchanged even though Democrat Joe Biden reportedly won that state.
Then in 2022, big money returned to Michigan to push through a ballot initiative for abortion. The distortion of $47 million spent for this abortion initiative enabled Democrats to take control of the Michigan House for the first time in more than a decade while reelecting the Democrat governor, attorney general, and secretary of state.
The Democrats have done a great job pushing the idea that direct democracy is as American as apple pie, but that form of government is exactly what our Founding Fathers feared most. Our nation is not a democracy, but a constitutional republic where representatives are selected by the people to represent their interests with significant oversight by the people. That minimizes the opportunity for corporate interests to control laws by tinkering with the language of proposed laws to favor their side. It is time to get rid of ballot initiatives.
