In addition to this California Commission, the Governors of Arizona and Maine have called for the legislature to consider changes to the initiative process to make it more difficult as has the Speaker of the Colorado State House. All the best. Voters going to the polls in 42 states next week will face at least one ballot proposition on top of the plethora of candidates seeking numerous federal, state and local offices from whom they must choose. But they exist to allow citizens to make laws and amend state constitutions directly, over the objections of recalcitrant or corrupt lawmakers. Popular initiatives are largely restricted to the West, unfamiliar in much of the eastern United States.
Referendums are much more common.
Both kinds of ballot propositions are, though, extremely significant in charting the nation's political course, especially in the state of California where 12 percent of the congressional districts and 12 percent of the nation reside. Initiatives that are successful in California, like the tax reform effort known as Prop 13, have the potential to ignite similar crusades in other states and to infect candidate driven campaigns with the message. The success of Prop 13 in 1978 provided the impetus for Ronald Reagan's embrace of fundamental tax reform and limitation as a key campaign theme in 1980. Copyright 2000 by United Press International. Most of the 204 ballot propositions being decided by voters Tuesday are of little import in the larger scheme of life in America.