Initiatives And Referendums In The United States
In the politics of the United States, initiative and referendum is a process that allows citizens of many U.S. states to place new legislation on a popular ballot, or place laws recently passed by the legislature on the ballot, and vote on it.
Initiative and referendum, along with recall elections and popular primary elections, is one of the signature reforms of the Progressive Era.
It is written into several state constitutions, particularly in the West.
Read more about Initiatives And Referendums In The United States: History, Types of Initiatives and Referendums, Objections To The System, Proposed Reforms
Famous quotes containing the words united states, initiatives, united and/or states:
“The United States is the only great nation whose government is operated without a budget. The fact is to be the more striking when it is considered that budgets and budget procedures are the outgrowth of democratic doctrines and have an important part in developing the modern constitutional rights.... The constitutional purpose of a budget is to make government responsive to public opinion and responsible for its acts.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“It is well known, that the best productions of the best human intellects, are generally regarded by those intellects as mere immature freshman exercises, wholly worthless in themselves, except as initiatives for entering the great University of God after death.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“The parallel between antifeminism and race prejudice is striking. The same underlying motives appear to be at work, namely fear, jealousy, feelings of insecurity, fear of economic competition, guilt feelings, and the like. Many of the leaders of the feminist movement in the nineteenth-century United States clearly understood the similarity of the motives at work in antifeminism and race discrimination and associated themselves with the anti slavery movement.”
—Ashley Montagu (b. 1905)
“The moment a mere numerical superiority by either states or voters in this country proceeds to ignore the needs and desires of the minority, and for their own selfish purpose or advancement, hamper or oppress that minority, or debar them in any way from equal privileges and equal rights—that moment will mark the failure of our constitutional system.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)