Ben Riggleman

You’ve probably heard the word referendum quite a bit in the last year. If you don’t know yet, a referendum is when citizens vote directly on a proposal. Earlier this month, a referendum was held in the nation of Colombia. By a razor-thin margin, Colombians voted against a peace treaty between their government and an insurgent group. Back in June, the United Kingdom held a referendum—termed “Brexit”—on whether to stay in the European Union. There too, a slight majority prevailed. Britain is now exiting from the E.U.

Mainers will soon vote on six referendum questions. These include marijuana legalization, a minimum-wage hike, and ranked-choice voting. (Ballotpedia.org is a great resource for learning more. You should also check out Noah Williams’s pieces on questions 1, 2, and 4.)

Our referendums won’t have the huge impact of Britain’s or Colombia’s. Nonetheless, by Maine standards, they’re weighty. And we’ll be deciding on them just as the British and Colombians did: by filling in an oval with a pen.

There’s a lot of promise in this kind of direct democracy, but it can also be problematic.
Take Brexit. Much has been written about the ignorance of the 51.9% who voted to leave the E.U. Clearly, many voted on gut-level fears about immigration. Pro-Brexit billboards showed shadowy hordes of brown people outside England’s gates. Did the average “Leave” voter research and carefully weigh the economic impacts of Brexit? Let’s be real.

Policy can be dauntingly complex. Referendums provide a way around government inertia, but they risk fast-tracking bad ideas.

I wouldn’t call any of Maine’s current ballot initiatives bad. Nonetheless, there are some knotty issues lurking behind those little ovals. Raising the minimum wage has been hotly debated by economists; some foresee damaging effects on small businesses. Ranked-choice voting can occasionally lead to strange election outcomes. The marijuana legalization bill is over thirty pages long. (Who’s got the munchies on hand to get through all that?)

Another problem with referendum questions is that they can be abused by powerful special-interest groups. Putting one on the ballot in Maine currently requires 61,123 signatures. Those with deep pockets can afford to finance signature drives in which collectors are paid as much as $10 per signature. One such individual is Las Vegas tycoon Shawn Scott.

Scott was behind one of the sleaziest petitions in Maine history: a $2.6 million effort to put a York County casino proposal on this year’s ballot. The bill was written so that only Scott’s company could possibly build the casino. It failed—over 55,000 of the signatures gathered were found to be invalid!—but Scott is already working to bring it back next year.

As Brexit and Shawn Scott demonstrate, referendums aren’t perfect, and the Maine system of ballot initiatives has its own flaws. That doesn’t mean we should scrap it, though.

To combat citizens’ ignorance, Maine could follow Oregon’s lead. In Oregon, twenty-four citizens are randomly selected to evaluate the year’s ballot questions. Much like a jury, this “Citizen’s Initiative Review Commission” spends five days hearing expert testimony on the questions’ pros and cons, then publishes its consensus.
We could reform pre-referendum petitioning by banning “pay-per-signature.” However, the constitutionality of this is iffy. Maine could also institute Massachusetts’ requirement that signatures come from each county in roughly equal number.

So let’s not give up on referendums just yet. In the long term, we can seek ways to improve Maine’s referendum process. In the short term, let’s get informed about what we’re voting on.
Author’s note: this article was inspired by Tim Wallace’s October 18th piece in The Portland Press Herald, “It’s time to question whether referendums are a good way to tackle problems.”