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Initiatives and referendums—collectively known as "ballot measures", "propositions", or simply "questions"—differ from most legislation passed by representative democracies; ordinarily, an elected legislative body develops and passes laws. Initiatives and referendums, by contrast, allow citizens to vote directly on legislation.
The extensive, official voting and election material regularly sent to every citizen each time – usually four times a year – compromising the pros and cons by all political proponents; here, to Berne's citizen in November 2008 about 5 national, 2 cantonal, 4 municipal referendums, and 2 elections (government and parliament of the City of ...
Referendums afford citizens greater decision-making power by giving them the ultimate decision, and they may also use referendums for agenda-setting if they are allowed to draft proposals to be put to referendums in efforts called popular initiatives. Compulsory voting can further increase participation.
Most popular initiatives are discussed and approved by the Parliament before the referendum. Out of the remaining initiatives that go to the referendum, only about 10% are approved by voters; in addition, voters often opt for a version of the initiative rewritten by the government. (See "Direct democracy in Switzerland" below.) [5] [6] [7] [8]
These questions are consequential to how we run our elections but the execution of what happens if they pass has not been thought through.
However, the only power these "local referendum initiatives" confer on citizens is the ability to add propositions to their local assembly's meeting agenda. The decision as to whether to submit citizen propositions to a popular vote (referendum) rests with the local assembly. A citizens' initiative referendum was proposed by the yellow vests ...
Wisconsin voters Tuesday voted down two referendum questions that sought to give the state legislators more power over distributing federal funding, a move that could have upended how billions of ...
An electronic referendum (or e-referendum) is a referendum in which voting is aided by electronic means. E-referendum employs information and communication technology such as the Internet (e-voting) or digital telephones rather than a classical ballot box or traditional methods system. [ 31 ]