Differences Between Senator Gravel's National Initiative for Democracy and This Plan's Citizens' Initiatives Amendment

Senator Gravel's
National Initiative for Democracy

This Plan's
 Citizens' Initiatives Amendment

Difference in Scope

Senator Gravel represented Alaska in the U.S. Senate from 1969 to 1981. He instigated his plan because he understands the way Congress has institutionalized and legalized its excesses. He realized first hand that Congress could not change its abuse of power except by a national initiative process.

In 1972, he presented his ideas in his book "Citizens Power: A People's Platform".  In 1977, he co-sponsored a Voter Initiative Constitutional Amendment. Congress held hearings. The People's Lobby headed by Ed and Joyce Koupal made presentations to Congress. However, the bill failed to make it out of committee.

Senator Gravel saw the issue of initiatives and referenda as relevant at all levels of government—from global to local. By 1992, the ideas were expressed by two organizations, "Direct Democracy" (originally "One World") and "Philadelphia II".  They attempted to use state initiatives to further their goals in Missouri, California, and Washington States.

This attempt ended with Philadelphia II v Gregoire, where Washington State Supreme Court ruled, "While the goals of the Philadelphia II initiative may be laudable, it is simply not within Washington's power to enact federal law. Our initiative process establishes a method independent from the Legislature for enacting state laws and cannot be used to enact laws beyond the jurisdiction of the state. Consequently, the Philadelphia II initiative does not fall within the provisions in our state constitution for initiatives."

The wide scope of their plan thus led to complicated legal issues, extensive litigation with appeals up to the U.S. Supreme Court, and delays that limited signature collection. The result was financial exhaustion in 1996. In 2001, the plan dropped international issues; however, it still includes initiatives and referenda at national, state, and local levels.

This Plan focuses exclusively on the problems of U.S. congressional excesses and deficiencies. The Plan proposes to ameliorate these problems by nationwide initiatives.

In the U.S., referenda are a power of the government. The Plan mentions them only briefly in the Amendment to clarify that, should Congress use them later, they are an equal of initiatives with the latest prevailing.

There is no attempt to influence any initiative powers at state and local levels—the Plan considers them under the purview of those jurisdictions.

The narrow scope of this Plan enables a state referendum to initiate it in full compliance with state law. If the voters approve the referendum, it returns to the legislature, which submits it to the Congress as an application for a Convention to propose Amendments.

Legislatures have taken these actions many times before in all states. There is no attempt to enact any federal law directly; rather only after ratification of the Constitutional Amendment authorizes them.

The above experiences with state initiatives prompted Senator Gravel's group to favor of a direct national election under Article VII. Additionally, Senator Gravel simplified the plan—for example, by dropping international or global elements.

Central to the new plan is the principle of self-enactment. The Philadelphia Convention met in 1787 under auspices of the Congress of the Confederation. Under the Articles of Confederation, Article 16 requires unanimous assent of all 13 states to change any provisions of the Articles. At the time, the existence of the new nation was in danger. The Founding Fathers, coordinating with Congress, took a short cut. The new Constitution mandated that the new government would go into effect when only nine of the 13 states acted affirmatively.

The ninth state, New Hampshire, ratified the new Constitution on June 21, 1788. The new Constitution did not receive ratification by the Congress of the Confederation. Instead, Government met under the new Constitution on March 4, 1788 thereby de-facto enacting itself. The U.S. Constitution was born by its own self-enactment in violation of the Articles of Confederation.

To best repair the fault, the remaining states eventually complied, the thirteenth state Rhode Island ratifying the Constitution on May 29, 1790. This belatedly met the requirements of the Articles of Confederation. However, the U.S. government governed with questionable authorization for about 27 months. This issue created a precedent for a self-enacting process.

It is the basis for the claim that a majority vote of the people can authorize national initiatives under Senator Gravel's plan. It is currently gathering Internet votes. The procedure is justified in the Parrish Report. Nevertheless, if the votes reach a certifiable majority, many questions remain. E.g., will the federal government accept it as a valid process, will the Supreme Court claim that it is beyond their jurisdiction thereby referring it to Congress, and who will enforce it?

This Plan determined that an Article VII approach would have excessive risks.  If over half (about 70 million) of the registered voters vote in favor, many challenges to the vote and the legality of the process could be launched. The challenges might be irresolvable, potentially leading to great controversy. Consequently, this Plan uses the Article V Second Method of ratification.

Rough estimates of the campaign costs showed that if the people try to push this Amendment through reluctant state legislators using voting pressure and initiatives in initiative states, the campaign costs would total between $250 and $500 million.

On the other hand, analysis showed that state Legislatures have profound constitutional obligations to support nationwide initiatives in order to protect their people. Moreover, in view of the people's intense frustration with Congress, state politicians who support the Amendment will gain great voter approval. If State Legislatures can support the Amendment, the campaign costs would be nominal—e.g., under $10 million. This is the current approach taken in this Plan.

Senator Gravel's plan adopts the Oregon System of popular signature petitions to qualify initiatives. In the U.S., most initiative states use this approach, which is similar to the Swiss initiative process.

Though the Oregon System has been widely used, it is more a case of re-adopting what is simple and easy rather than making the effort to develop the best system.

Several major defects have become apparent in state initiatives. Special interests often write the initiatives. Once the sponsors privately write that initiative and the state approves its legal form, the People cannot affect the wording. Special interests can pay signature gathers to get the signatures needed to qualify the initiative. The signature process becomes very expensive at a nationwide level. There is no way to decide which initiatives are important so all must go on the ballot, which at a nationwide level will lead to voter overload. Note that voter turnout in Switzerland has declined, probably in part because of initiative-generated voter fatigue.

This Plan offers an initiative qualification system that the citizens used in ancient Athens, the cradle of democracy, for 180 years. Selection and qualification is the responsibility of a randomly selected Assembly of citizens eligible to vote.

This approach has several advantages. The Assembly will be more tamper proof than a Federal Grand Jury and virtually immune from special interests' influence. It costs less than signature petitions. It permits citizens' feedback on proposed initiatives for many months before the Assembly makes the decision whether to qualify them or not. It operates completely independent of government. It ensures that ballot initiatives are important, well constructed, and thoroughly vetted. It offers independent majority and minority opinions on the initiatives. It ensures that the electorate is not overloaded.

Obviously, someone must reuse this approach in practice to check or change the details long before the Convention finalizes the Amendment. One or more states are the obvious candidates, replacing their signature petition system by a state citizens' initiatives assembly. A candidate state should do this as soon as it is certain that a few states will submit or have submitted their Convention applications to Congress.

Senator Gravel's Amendment creates a U.S. Electoral Trust as an independent agency to administer the initiative system. The citizens of each state will elect one member of the Board of Directors.

This approach will keep federal government from having a direct influence on the Trust. However, this approach is subject to special interests' influence in the campaign and election process. Eventually, their special interests' influence might well mirror that experienced in congressional elections.

This Plan's approach is to use the Citizens' Initiative Assembly to manage the initiative process without external interference. A randomly selected citizens group is our only know method of preventing external influence.

The Assembly will hire experts to help with complex or demanding jobs, but will have no permanent staff that could exert influence on the Assembly. Recently, various applications of Citizens' Assemblies have validated their capabilities. For the U.S. Citizens' Initiatives Assembly, its relatively large size (480 members) will ensure that a wide range of skills and management talent will prove more than adequate to the task.