Sunday, February 13, 2000

IS DEMOCRACY WORTH IT?

by Terry Stone

Democracy is such a pain in the neck. Sometimes I think about how nice it would be to have a benevolent dictator in charge of everything! No voting, no writing letters to politicians or newspapers, no paying attention to all those, oh-so-boring, issues. I wonder why I bother. I mean, take the last two Sundays for example. I'd volunteered to go out and stand in front of a store to ask startled strangers to sign a petition in order to have an initiative placed on their upcoming ballot. Each Sunday I woke up before my sleepy family, got dressed and met other democrats (small d) like me to prepare for another day out on the streets. We brought pens, pieces of cardboard cut to the size of legal paper, rubber bands to hold the petitions to the cardboard and bottles of water for our soon-to-be-parched throats. We met first at a coffee shop to rehash the numbers before venturing out to tackle the unsuspecting public. In order to get an initiative on the State's ballot, we must obtain the signatures of 5% of those who voted in the last gubernatorial election. That's a heck of a lot of signatures in a very short period of time: 150 days. And, we're a pitifully small group of volunteers (20 in our little group, 400 in the state). So, we drink lots of coffee and constantly remind each other why we're doing this. And, why are we doing this? We're doing this because it looks like democracy, in general, and the initiative process, in particular, is being taken over by those with the big bucks and we feel we have to do something about it. The initiative process started out as exactly that: a means to go around a government that was not following the will of the people, by initiating legislation on the grass roots level. It began in California just after the turn of the century, because special interests and the railroads were perceived as having too much control over state government. When Hiram Johnson was sworn in as California's governor in 1911, he vowed to "eliminate every private interest from the government" by giving voters direct power to influence politics through the initiative process. Johnson's solution: private citizens (volunteers) organized to collect signatures on petitions in order to place an initiative on a local ballot. Then, voters would have an opportunity to pass legislation that lawmakers might not agree with, but the general population wanted. Things didn't turn out quite as planned. Today, most signature gatherers are paid anywhere from 50 cents to 2 dollars for each signature. They're paid by the corporate and special interest groups who have the millions, yes millions, of dollars to invest in running a typical initiative campaign. (Like they say about politics and sausage, you don't want to know what goes into either one. The same could be said for the initiative process.) So, what are we volunteers working on now? We believe our current objective is a slam-dunk winner: an initiative to hold politicians accountable by limiting their ability to take kick-backs. But again, the initiative itself is almost a side issue. The real question is whether it is still possible for an all-volunteer signature-gathering force to put an initiative on a ballot. Can we do it? Can we reclaim the process? Good question. These days, what private citizen is going to stand in front of a Target on a Sunday morning and ask hundreds of strangers to sign a petition? Who, in their right mind, would take all the abuse shoppers toss off while they brush past you: "You're wasting my time", "You people should all be ____(fill in the blank)." Or worse: those who just ignore you as if you don't exist like you aren't worth their notice. And, who wants to contend with the sheer impossibility of it all: "I don't vote, it's a waste of time." "I never sign petitions." "I'm from Canada." "I'm a felon." Or, who has the presence of mind to avoid the arguments so many people seem to want to get into: "Why work on this issue? What we need is border guards with machine guns. Don't you agree?" At the end of the first day, I had two valid signatures out of the 12 I had managed to get in the 2 hours I stood in front of a Ralph's. But, the following Sunday I finished with 30 valid signature. And, next Sunday we'll be out again, all 20 of us. And, the Sunday after that, and the Sunday after that. For five months. Yeah, democracy is a real pain in the neck. I'm a witness to that! A real pain in the neck.