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CHAPTER II

THE INITIATIVE EXPLAINED

IN popular assemblies, mass meetings, and parliamentary bodies generally, the individual member has the right to propose resolutions and make motions. While the rules by which such bodies are governed are of infinite variety, the individual member usually has a right to bring his resolutions to a vote unless they are obnoxious to the overwhelming majority of his fellow members or are matters in which his fellow members take no interest. It sometimes happens as a result of the intricacies of parliamentary procedure that a minority is able to prevent a direct vote upon resolutions favored by a majority. This is quite frequently the case in representative assemblies tied down by rigid rules which provide for the committee system of considering and reporting upon all measures proposed. In fact, the fate of important legislation is often determined, not by the opinions of the majority of the legislators, but rather by the skill of the leaders of the assembly in manipulating the parliamentary procedure at critical times so as to prevent a decisive vote or so as to bring the question to a vote in a form that is contrary to the wishes of the majority. From the standpoint of those who favor political democracy, this manipulation of the rules of legislative bodies

so as to defeat the will of the majority of the members is one of the most serious breakdowns of the representative system. But it may be said that every parliamentary body is governed by rules of its own adoption and that, therefore, revision of the rules to enable the majority to have its way is always in the majority's own hands. If we pass over these somewhat unusual and perhaps temporary perversions of parliamentary procedure, the general fact remains that every member of an assembly has the right of initiative. He can make a motion and in one form or another force the assembly either to take action or to refuse to take action on it. True, in many assemblies a motion is not considered unless it is seconded; and usually it requires a certain small minority of the members to call for a record vote upon any motion that is either adopted or defeated. Inasmuch as such a vote, taken by yeas and nays, is an open record, the members of a parliamentary body, especially if it be a representative assembly, are often anxious, for various reasons, to avoid the straight issue. The record may prove embarrassing to them when they go back to their constituents, some of whom very probably desire one thing and some another. If the vote were to be taken by secret ballot, there would often be less difficulty in securing decisive action, but the necessities of representation and responsibility to constituents make the secret ballot wholly unsuitable for use in such bodies.

The Initiative is the right to propose resolutions and force them to a vote, transferred from the ordinary assembly to the electorate as a whole. In other words,

it is the right of the electors to start things and make them go. The exact rules governing a parliamentary body are obviously inapplicable to the procedure of popular political action through election machinery. A citizen cannot stand up and make a motion, for there is no presiding officer to be addressed and no body of citizens within hearing to vote upon it. The citizen desiring to initiate something must at least reduce his motion to writing and submit it in advance in order that it may be printed and distributed to the various polling places where the electors can see it and formally express their approval or disapproval of it. But inasmuch as under these conditions the motion cannot be disposed of by reference to a committee, or by being laid on the table, or by being indefinitely postponed, or by being consigned to the waste-basket, it is clear that the right of a single citizen to make a motion, force it upon the attention of the entire electorate of a great city or state and press it to a vote, would tend to confusion and disorder. The mere physical act of voting upon every motion that might be made by any one of the entire body of electors might well be actually impossible not only if there were but one election day in a year, but even if every day were to be made an election day and the electors were to be considered public officials and required to give their whole time to the job. So, in practice, the Initiative is limited. In order to present a matter to the suffrages of the people and secure a vote upon it, the citizen who proposes it must secure in advance the voluntary coöperation of a certain number or percentage of his fellow-citizens who are willing to join him in insisting

upon bringing the matter formally before the entire body of voters. This requirement is analogous to the parliamentary rule that a motion must be seconded before it will be considered and that the yeas and nays cannot be demanded by less than, say, one-fifth of the members. The first signer of a popular petition, therefore, may be considered as the mover of the resolution and all the other signers as seconders. The number of seconders required is of the very essence of the problem. In the nomination of a candidate for councillor in an English city, one elector proposes, another seconds and eight others indorse. Obviously, popular initiative in this case is easily workable. Under a recent commission government act of one of our American states, a petition for the recall of a public officer had to be signed by 75 per cent of the electors. Under these conditions popular initiative would be difficult and, except in very small political units, practically impossible. These extreme illustrations both lie outside the field of what is usually known as the Initiative, as they relate to petitions for the nomination or recall of public officers, rather than for the enactment or repeal of legislative measures. The advocates of the Initiative consider that if the signatures of, say, twenty-five per cent of the electors is required to the petitions for the submission of a measure to popular vote, this requirement is practically prohibitive in state or national affairs and renders the Initiative unworkable. The purpose of the Initiative, the same as the parliamentary right of individual members to offer resolutions in a popular body, is to secure majority rule. If this plan were to secure

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