Talk:Initiatives and referendums in the United States

Map and Chart Consistency
The Direct Democracy in U.S. States chart says Kansas allows legislatively-referred state statutes, but the map color is red indicating it only allows legislatively-referred initiated constitutional amendments. Map or chart should be edited for consistency. I reviewed the other states and saw no other consistency issues. Have there been any recent attempts to change these laws? Perhaps there should be a section on state discussion for changing these processes.

This website has some great information on the process and history.

Anonkiwi (talk) 22:25, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

neutrality
Pray tell me, but why does the criticism paragraph occupy half the page, full of weasel words? John Riemann Soong 09:59, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, seriously. There's [citation needed]s all over the place, too. 137.112.118.103 (talk) 16:35, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Opposing views?
The start of this article seems to imply this is specific to the U.S. However, I've been told that such a system is used in Switzerland and works rather well. Any Swiss contributers able to help out here? Also, how does such a scheme relate to plebiscite systems? Are there similarities? Comparisons?

List of state laws on initiative and referendum
I was thinking we should have a summary of state laws on I&R, analogous to Ballot_access. Does such a list exist anywhere on Wikipedia, and if not, would this be a good article to place it in? A good source could be http://www.iandrinstitute.org/statewide_i&r.htm, although I would want our list to reference the pertinent constitutional articles/sections. Thanks, Simultaneous movement (talk) 14:24, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

reverting reversion
I reverted this and left a note at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Law. -- John Vandenberg (chat) 13:30, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Objections to the system
'''Other criticisms are that it results in provisions being added to constitutions that would be better subjects for the more flexible statutory law, which can be more easily revised to fit changing circumstances, and that it clutters constitutions, which are supposed to be basic frameworks of government and not excessively detailed plans, with minutae, making them unwieldy. '''

This seems misleading, as not all initiative and referenda affect constitutions, nor do all states which have initiative and referenda systems allow constitutional amendments to originate through this method: XINOPH | TALK 12:37, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

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Wisconsin?
The Supreme Court is hearing a case, Gill v. Whitford, which involves an examination of partisan gerrymandering in Wisconsin. If the Court decides that this is a non-justiciable controversy, the most likely way it would be addressed it via the initiative or referendum process. But for some odd reason, Wisconsin isn't discussed on this page? MrRedwood (talk) 20:07, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

NIH
What about the NIH's All Of Us Initiative (AOUI) in the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI)? AOUI doesn't even have a Wikipedia article. MaynardClark (talk) 18:00, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Omission in article
According to this article there are two kinds of initiative -- direct & indirect. However, nowhere in the article does it explain what this difference is. I assume, based on what I've witnessed in Oregon, a direct initiative might be where a measure is placed on the ballot as a result of a petition being submitted with sufficient verified signatures. If so, maybe an indirect initiative is one where the legislature votes to put the measure on the ballot? -- llywrch (talk) 18:18, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

Why legislative referral info?
This chart has tons of info about legislative referrals. This is not part of initiatives and referendums from the people. Legislative referrals comes from the legislature. This is the wrong map for this article.--Wyn.junior (talk) 19:26, 23 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Well, the body of the article encompasses both. The intro only scopes the article to publicly-initiated, but that could be changed. Or, we could do a strong split and try to move the latter to Legislative referral. This map is indeed a bit overwhelming; it would be nice to have two maps instead. Splitting this map into one for public-initiated and one for legislatively referred would make that kind of content split easy. Or the map could be split into regular laws vs. constitutional amendments. Or it could be split into four maps. -- Beland (talk) 02:11, 29 May 2024 (UTC)



Stop deleting additional information
Every time there is an attempt at improving this article, a very important one I think, since it's about democracy, direct democracy, it is deleted by an administrator under dubious claims of "not compatibly licensed" references. This article need serious improvements, and deleting efforts to do so is an absolute shame.

Snarcky96 (talk) 18:32, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Mississippi
Should we remove Mississippi as a state that allows ballot initiatives? According to the state supreme court, you need signatures from voters in 5 districts, even though the state only has 4– thus making it impossible to put an initiative on the ballot in the state at the moment. Prcc27 (talk) 23:19, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
 * The situation could at least be noted somewhere as they have had ballot initiatives not affected by this and have "historically" allowed them until now. Something tells me that this is going to be a mess to deal with, but your proposed suggestion should be fine.  Amended: Additionally, this isn't likely the only article that needs to be amended.  There is the 2004 Mississippi Amendment 1 (Mentions a public referendum, but unclear if it was a citizen ballot measure; Needs updating anyways for Obergefell v. Hodges), the 2020 Mississippi flag referendum (A quick search shows both legislative and citizen ballot measures), File:Map of US state cannabis laws.svg (Mississippi needs to be adjusted), Template:Cannabis_in_the_United_States (Which I just fixed), Cannabis in Mississippi (Also might need to have a mention that the Mississippi Senate recently tried to create rules for the program that your source mentions), Legality of cannabis by U.S. jurisdiction (Which needs some numbers adjusted as well), and Voter identification laws in the United States (Your source mentions Initiative 27, to which this may apply; Didn't find an appropriate article where Initiative 31 applies)  --Super Goku V (talk) 01:18, 15 May 2021 (UTC)  (Amended 02:14, 15 May 2021 (UTC))
 * So is Mississippi now a red state ("states that allow legislatively-referred constitutional amendments only")? Or should we have a separate color for Mississippi noting that the other method is currently obsolete (I edited the current Mississippi color to reflect this)? If the latter, what color should Mississippi be– I don't think it should be colored a shade of green anymore. Prcc27 (talk) 00:51, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Ugh, I got a bit sidetracked and forgot to respond. My thoughts are that Mississippi could remain the same color or be striped to be a split between teal and red (if it doesn't break accessibility rules) while being explained in the text that it has a ballot initiative method in their state constitution, but that it is currently invalid (or some other wording) under the interpretation by the state's Supreme Court.  --Super Goku V (talk) 07:47, 20 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I think I would prefer to keep Mississippi red, and add a footnote explaining that the current ballot initiative process in the state is obsolete. I'm not sure about striping with teal. The de facto status is that there is no ballot initiative process, and the de jure status is that it is obsolete. That seems almost in line with the red states. I don't think the map necessarily needs to get into the nuances of the constitution. Prcc27 (talk) 08:03, 20 May 2021 (UTC)
 * If that is what you want to do, then it sounds like it will work out, especially with a footnote to explain things. --Super Goku V (talk) 20:06, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

Name change?
I propose we change this page to Referendums in the United States. This will make the page more consistent with other country pages. Bluealbion (talk) 00:25, 25 August 2022 (UTC)