State Minimum Wage Laws as a Response to Federal Inaction

This article analyzes state legislative and ballot measure activity related to the minimum wage between 2003 and 2020. The analysis distinguishes proposals to raise the minimum wage from those to index it to the annual rate of inflation, and examines the proposed dollar amount, the process used (legislation vs. ballot measure), and the measure’s success or failure. The analysis suggests that state activity tends to increase when the minimum wage rises on the federal policy agenda, and that partisanship and ideology also play a central role in efforts to raise and index state minimum wages.

Direct Democracy and Political Decision Making

Direct democracy in the United States is the process whereby voters decide the fate of laws, through either an initiative or a referendum. Initiatives allow voters to approve or reject a policy proposal, whereas referendums permit voters to decide the fate of laws passed by the legislature. Although some high-profile ballot measures, especially those related to ‘moral’ issues, may induce people to vote, most ballot measures are unfamiliar to voters and so have a limited effect on participation. Rather than mobilizing voters, the more choice confronting voters faced with ballot measures is whether to “roll-off” or abstain from voting on them. The subsequent decision, how to vote, is intimately related to the decision over whether to vote and is largely motivated by the same factors. In deciding whether and how to vote, voters must know what a ballot measure is about, discern the political motivation underlying it, and match that information to their political predispositions to cast a Yes or No vote; otherwise they abstain. The more voters know about a given proposition, the more likely it is that they will vote and, furthermore, that the vote they do cast will reflect their underlying political values. In contrast both to the claims made by many critics of direct democracy and, also, some current studies in political science, votes in direct democracy are often underpinned by substantive, policy-based considerations. Voters are thus capable of meaningfully participating in the direct democracy process.

Federal Interference with State and Tribal Sports Betting Regulations Will Not Work: Where the Sports Wagering Integrity Act of 2018 Went Wrong and How Federal Legislation Might Be Effective

On Monday, May 14, 2018, the Supreme Court of the United States struck a fatal blow to the federal Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) when it determined PASPA violated the Tenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Prior to the PASPA repeal, Nevada had been the only state in the United States (US) authorized to offer a full complement of legal sports betting options. Because, Nevada’s race books and sports pools have had the ability to offer wagers on sports since 1947, those legal sports betting operations were “grandfathered” into PASPA when it was passed by Congress in 1992. Having anticipated repeal as a possible outcome, four states passed laws making sports betting legal in case the Supreme Court ruled in New Jersey’s favor, and one state pre-emptively legalized sports betting through a ballot measure. With barriers removed by the PASPA repeal, state gambling regulators were able to grant licenses and adopt regulations. State legislatures were also able legalize sports wagering during their upcoming legislative sessions. And they did!

Revolt in the Suburbs

This chapter examines some of the forces that led to the decline of mainline Protestant religious authority in the 1960s and 1970s. In addition, it argues that the waning of religious authority during these decades liberated upwardly mobile white Americans to follow their own inclinations and interests, not only in their personal lives but also in their thinking about politics and society. And it was at precisely this point that many of them developed a sudden affinity for the extreme libertarian view that the use of state power to correct systemic injustice or redirect resources to the less fortunate was fundamentally illegitimate. The chapter concludes with an account of mainline Protestant leaders’ failed campaign to defeat Proposition 14, a 1964 ballot measure that repealed California’s fair housing law.

Can Voters Deliberate?

Deliberative processes generally result in increased issue-specific knowledge for participants and can lead to opinion change as a result. The question asked in chapter 9 is: Does this translate into increased knowledge and opinion change for the wider public who these processes aim to assist? The chapter summarizes research suggesting that voters often lack the information they need to cast their votes on ballot measures. As detailed in this chapter, studies of Citizens’ Initiative Reviews (CIRs) show the reviews can help voters overcome these information deficiencies. Voters who read the CIR statements were more likely to form opinions that aligned with the balance of information and arguments provided by review participants. Further, voters tend to find the statements both reliable and useful and learn new information about the ballot measure, even if that information does not align with their cultural predispositions.

Progressive Politics in the Pacific Northwest

Through interviews with the civic innovators responsible for bringing these civic innovations into existence, chapter 4 recounts the development of Citizens’ Juries and the Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR). Since the 1970s, Citizens’ Juries have convened a sample of approximately twenty-four citizens, reflective of the demographics of the communities from which they are drawn, to collectively study, discuss, and assess policies and electoral candidates. The CIR was born of this idea. It asks citizens to study a ballot measure and then provide an assessment of that measure for the wider public to utilize when casting their ballots. In the chapter’s telling of these stories, readers are introduced to four civic reformers—Ned Crosby, Pat Benn, Tyrone Reitman, and Elliot Shuford. Each of these individuals played a key role in the design, lobbying, and eventual implementation of the CIR.

Introduction

Citizens are often asked to make decisions about ballot measures, but they rarely have access to reliable information with which to make those decisions. This chapter tells the story of Seattle’s failed monorail project to explain the problems voters face when figuring out how to cast their vote. It introduces a new governing institution that could help solve that dilemma, the Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR). The CIR gathers together a small group of citizens to deliberate about a ballot measure and then pass along their findings for voters to use when making their own decisions. The CIR continues the tradition of experimental democracy, which seeks to improve the ways that citizens govern themselves. The CIR, and deliberative institutions like it, attempt to empower the public by introducing reliable information into political decision making.

A Crucial Test

Chapter 5 tells the story of the first official Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR) through the eyes of one of its participants, Marion Sharp. The CIR asked twenty-four demographically stratified voters to review an Oregon ballot measure that increased mandatory minimum sentencing for repeat sexual offenses and driving under the influence of intoxicants. Over five days, participants heard from expert witnesses and reviewed evidence related to the need for and potential impact of mandatory sentencing. Participants engaged in facilitated discussion aimed at gauging the credibility of that evidence and distilling it for voters. Despite flare-ups among participants and behind-the-scenes challenges, at the end of the review Marion and her fellow panelists drafted a Citizens’ Statement containing key facts about the measure and the best arguments favoring and opposing it. That statement appeared in the state Voters’ Pamphlet for the electorate to use before casting their ballots.

Conclusion

The book’s conclusion details how the Citizen’s Initiative Review (CIR) exemplifies the possibility for democratic reform. This chapter draws on the stories of several deliberative reforms to exemplify their possibilities and pitfalls. Tough some attempts at institutionalization have fallen flat, the CIR has expanded from a pilot in Oregon to a new governing body being tested and proposed across the United States. Other citizen-centered institutions, like juries, have seen similar expansion, bringing greater opportunity for self-governance to citizens across the globe. Though the diffusion of democratic reform may seem idealistic, once immovable policy can shift. One example reviewed in the chapter is same-sex marriage legalization, which swept through the United States as voters and politicians began to understand the perspectives of individuals and communities who had been denied the right to marry. In Ireland, a deliberative minipublic produced a ballot measure to legalize same-sex marriage that won public backing. The chapter, and book, concludes that democratic reform is possible but will not happen unless the public demands it—citizens, activists, politicians, and academics alike.

Hope for Democracy

Concerned citizens across the globe fear that democracy is failing them, but civic reformers are crafting new tools that bring back into politics the wider public and its capacity for reason. This book spotlights one such innovation—the Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR). Each review gathers a random sample of twenty voters to study a statewide ballot measure. These citizen panelists interrogate advocates, opponents, and experts and distill what they learn into a one-page analysis for the official Voters’ Pamphlet. The Oregon government permanently established the CIR in 2011, and reformers have tested it in locations across the United States and Europe. This book introduces the citizen activists responsible for the development of the CIR, as well as key participants at the inaugural CIR whose experiences changed their lives. Along with these stories, this book provides evidence of the CIR’s impact on voters, who not only make better decisions as a result of reading the citizen analysis but also change the way they understand their role in government. The CIR fits into a larger set of deliberative reforms occurring around the world and into a long history of democratic experiments that stretch back through the American revolution to ancient Athens. The book weaves together historical vignettes, contemporary research, and personal narratives to show how citizens, civic reformers, and politicians can work together to revitalize modern democracy.