Initiative and Referendum in the 21st Century

Initiative and Referendum
in the 21^st Century:

Final Report and Recommendations
of the NCSL I&R Task Force

NCSL's Initiative and Referendum Task Force has been at work since December 2001, reviewing the growing use of initiatives around the country and examining their effect on representative democracy at the state level.

This report offers a set of guidelines to enhance the initiative process and to avoid many of the pitfalls currently experienced by the initiative states. The 34 recommendations contained in the report acknowledge that the initiative process has outgrown the existing laws that govern it. After listening to expert testimony from a wide variety of witnesses and compiling data from all 50 states, the task force concluded that the initiative has evolved from its early days as a grassroots tool to enhance representative democracy into a tool that too often is exploited by special interests. The initiative lacks critical elements of the legislative process and can have both intended and unintended effects on the ability of the representative democratic process to comprehensively develop policies and priorities.

It is the task force's intent that the discussion and adoption of the reforms in this report lead to a more thoughtful lawmaking process, improve interaction between initiative proponents and legislatures, and ultimately produce better public policy and reinforce representative democracy.

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For more information please contact Jennie Bowser elections-info@ncsl.org in NCSL's Denver office.