The Increasing Salience of Illegal Immigration and the Qualification of Proposition 187

Abstract

Direct democracy was introduced in many western states of the United States in the early twentieth century. The Progressives wanted to heal what they saw as the political system’s deep wounds. They believed that special interests, notably the railroad companies in California, were manipulating and bribing politicians and corrupting the political system for their own selfish ends. “There was only one kind of politics and that was corrupt politics. It didn’t matter whether a man was a Republican or Democrat. The Southern Pacific Railroad controlled both parties, and he either had to stay out of the game altogether or play it with the railroad,” suggested a California journalist writing in 1896.¹ The Progressives believed that making the system more democratic could save democracy from itself. While the founding fathers had feared the tyranny of the masses, the Progressives sought to give more power to the people to provide a countervailing force to the special interests. To do so they introduced a number of reforms, including the secret ballot, the direct election of U.S. senators, women’s suffrage, and primary elections. Another key reform was direct democracy, of which there are three main types: the recall, referendum, and initiative. Voters can use the recall to remove an elected politician from office before the end of his or her term. Referendums allow legislatures to place a law before the people for their approval or rejection. Initiatives, which are the most controversial of the three types of direct democracy, differ from referendums in that the citizens themselves write and adjudicate on the proposed change to the law.