Referendum CounterplanBoston Debate LeagueVarsity Division

Referendum Counterplan Table of Contents

Summary2Glossary3

First Negative Constructive (1NC) Shell 4

Answers to PermutationAT: Perm Does Both5AT: Advisory Perm6

Solvency ExtensionsAT: No Solvency Polls Arent Trustworthy7AT: No Solvency Process Manipulation8AT: No Solvency Delays9AT: No Solvency Rollback10AT: No Solvency Experts Key11AT: No Solvency No Direct Democracy12AT: No Solvency No Intrinsic Benefit13AT: No Solvency Not Allowed14AT: Solvency Turn Capitalism15AT: Solvency Turn Poverty16

Summary

The Referendum Counterplan is the only generic counterplan in the Varsity Packet. The outline of the counterplan changes the process of decision making proposed by the Affirmative teams plan. In each case, the Affirmative team argues that the United States Federal Government should take some sort of action. In the Referendum Counterplan, the Negative team is not arguing against the government taking that action, but instead they are arguing that the decision should be made by a binding national referendum. In other words, the entire country should vote on the issues highlighted by the Affirmative team, and the federal government should be required to adhere to the decision of the voters.

The remainder of the evidence discusses why the use of a binding referendum is the best course of action. For example, a binding referendum would lead to high voter turnout and provide the government an opportunity to enact a reform based on direct democracy. This power of direct democracy would give citizens an enhanced ownership of the policy that they otherwise cannot experience. Furthermore, referendums draw politically engaged voters and statistics show that unlike policies enacted by government representatives, there can be no doubt that the decision represents the will of the people. The counterplan evidence continues on to explain that direct democracy is the best form of government, and thus the best way to enact any plan. Finally, the evidence explains that direct democracy is key to increasing political engagement and helping end poverty.

GlossaryAdvisory Referendum When a legislative body can choose to enact or not enact the outcome of a direct vote by an entire group on a proposal.Binding Referendum When a legislative body is bound to the outcome of a direct vote by an entire group on a proposal.Civil Liberties The state of being subject only to laws established for the good of the community, especially with regard to freedom of action and speech; individual rights protected by law from unjust governmental or other interference.Direct Democracy A form or system of democracy giving citizens an extraordinary amount of participation in the legislation process and granting them a maximum of political self-determination.Electoral Law Laws defining what is and is not allowed in electionsFiat Latin for let it be done A theoretical construct in policy debate derived from the word in the resolution whereby the substance of the resolution is debated, rather than the political feasibility of enactment and enforcement of a given planJudicial Review The doctrine under which legislative and executive actions are subject to review by the judiciary. A court with judicial review power may invalidate laws and decisions that are incompatible with a higher authority, such as the terms of a written constitution.National Referendum A direct vote in which an entire nation is asked to vote on a particular proposal.Petition Clause The formal name for the right to petition as referred to in the First Amendment.Political Actor (Political Agent) A person responsible for decision making about and enacting of a policy.Political Elites A small group of people who control a disproportionate amount of wealth or political power.Popular Sovereignty The principle that the authority of the government is created and sustained by the consent of its people, through their elected representatives (Rule by the People), who are the source of all political power.Public Deliberation A conversation or discussion that includes citizens who reflect diverse viewpoints on the topic or issue under consideration.Rollback The process of restoring something to its previously defined state.Special Interest Subversion An attempt to transform the established social order and its structures of power, authority, and hierarchy by a special interest group.

1NC Shell (1/2)Counterplan Text: The United States Federal Government should put to vote a direct binding national referendum regarding the passage of the plan.1. The Counterplan has the following net benefits: ___________________________________.2. The Counterplan solves The public supports the curtailing of surveillance, the counterplan poses a better solution by erring on the side of liberty.Pew Research Center, 2015 (Lee Rainie and Mary Madden for the Pew Research Center on Internet, Science, and Tech; Americans View On Government Surveillance Programs; 03/16/2015; accessed 07/01/2015; .)Americans are divided in their concerns about government surveillance of digital communications In this survey, 17% of Americans said they are very concerned about government surveillance of Americans data and electronic communication; 35% say they are somewhat concerned; 33% say they are not very concerned and 13% say they are not at all concerned about the surveillance. Those who are more likely than others to say they are very concerned include those who say they have heard a lot about the surveillance efforts (34% express strong concern) and men (21% are very concerned). When asked about more specific points of concern over their own communications and online activities, respondents expressed somewhat lower levels of concern about electronic surveillance in various parts of their digital lives: Americans Have More Muted Concerns about Government Monitoring of their Own Digital Behavior 39% say they are very concerned or somewhat concerned about government monitoring of their activity on search engines. 38% say they are very concerned or somewhat concerned about government monitoring of their activity on their email messages. 37% express concern about government monitoring of their activity on their cell phone. 31% are concerned about government monitoring of their activity on social media sites, such as Facebook or Twitter. 29% say they are concerned about government monitoring of their activity on their mobile apps. In addition, notable numbers of respondents said that some of these questions were not applicable to them. In general, men are more likely than women to say that they are very concerned about government surveillance of Americans data and electronic communications (21% vs. 12%). Men are also more likely than women to be very concerned about surveillance over their own activities on mobile apps and search engines. When asked to elaborate on their concerns, many survey respondents were critical of the programs, frequently referring to privacy concerns and their personal rights.

AT: Perm Do Both[___] Only committing to a binding referendum will encourage voter participation. DuVivier, 2006 (KK DuVivier; Professor of Law at University of Denver; The United States as a Democratic Ideal?: International Lessons in Referendum Democracy p 845-848; University of Denver Sturm College of Law; 2006; accessed 07/01/2015; .)In contrast to votes that bind in legal terms, some referendums are only advisory or consultative.170 Advisory referendums are not as common in the United States, and some state constitutions disallow ballot questions that have no legal effect.171 Yet New Zealand172 and several European countries, including Denmark, Finland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom,173 have used referendums that do not formally bind. Critics of the New Zealand advisory referendum process, however, call it a fraud on the community because the government asks the public for its opinion when the Government has said that it will not necessarily follow that opinion.174 Consequently, New Zealands advisory referendum statute, although popular at first,175 [w]ithin a decade . . . appears to have fallen into desuetude.176 This conclusion presumes, however, that the primary objective of citizen initiated referendums is for them to create positive law. The reality, in fact, is that most initiatives fail,177 and despite low passage rates and despite high costs, the main reason interest groups in the United States continue to pursue unsuccessful initiatives is that they can be an effective route to exert pressure on other political actors.178 Thus, these advisory referendums allow citizens to place pressure on legislative bodies to take a certain course of action.179 In the United States, citizens have used advisory referendums in the local government arena. For example, in 1983, local voters passed Proposition 0 that asked the City of San Francisco to notify President Reagan that they favored the repeal of bilingual ballot provisions of the Federal Voting Rights Act.180 In addition, during the late 1970s, advisory referendums directed attention to national environmental and nuclear-freeze issues.181 More significantly, the experience in Europe has shown that advisory referendums often effectively bind governments. No parliament in Europe has explicitly disregarded the verdict delivered by the people, and were this to happen on a major issue, the fallout would be severe.182 Furthermore, an advisory referendum often proves preferable to one that binds. First, it does not conflict with an existing system of government that requires legislative supremacy. For example, in the United Kingdom, the notion of parliamentary sovereignty183 dictates that Parliament cannot be formally bound by an advisory referendum.184 Consequently, an advisory referendum exerts pressure while simultaneously preserving the existing governance system.185 Second, an advisory process better reflects the reality that government actors must interpret and implement any measure.186 An advisory referendum allows a legislature flexibility to predict the outcome of a provision in a manner that reconciles possible conflicts187 and anticipates constitutional challenges in the courts.188

AT: Advisory Perm[___]

[___] An advisory referendum eliminates direct democracy. Every instance of direct democracy is key. Robinson, 2007 (Nick, Yale Law School, J.D., Citizens Not Subjects: U.S. Foreign Relations Law and the Decentralization of Foreign Policy, Akron Law Review, 40 Akron L. Rev. 647)The argument in this article for local democratic participation is also, perhaps primarily, a humanist one. With more possibility for participation, we become thicker citizens. We have greater ability to engage in our communities and in turn more control over and understanding of our own lives as humans. For Durkheim, government had its own consciousness. Such a characterization highlighted that although government at its root might merely be a shared idea in a community of conscious humans, it could also have its own agency. The state had its own logic that was removed, and even unknown, from those that "thought" government into existence. He writes of a democratic state that "the closer communication becomes between the government consciousness and the rest of society, and the more this consciousness expands and the more things it takes in, the more democratic the character of the society will be." n14 For Durkheim, it is the democratic state's reflection upon its citizens through its citizens that gave democracy a moral superiority. n15 [*655] When we debate where and how democratic governance will occur, we are battling over what choreography of thought will define our state and we as citizens. Such stakes are not easily quantifiable. If our aim in structuring governance, however, is not to reach definable utopias, but rather to balance as best we can the competing interests and tensions of being human and being governed, then we must take into account governance's transcendent depths and not just its readily chartable currents.

AT: No Solvency Polls Arent Trustworthy[___] Referendums draw the most politically engaged voters who are educated on the issue at hand.Donovan and Karp, 2006 (Todd Donovan, professor of political science at Western Washington University; Jeffrey A. Karp, professor of politics at the University of Exeter; Popular Support for Direct Democracy p 683-684; Party Politics Vol 12 No 5; SAGE Publications; 2006; accessed 07/01/2015; .)In a survey of the effects of political reforms designed to lower barriers to participation (e.g. postal voting, absentee voting, election-day registration), Berinsky (2005) notes that such reforms often have the effect of mobilizing higher proportions of interested voters than less interested ones. He finds that when rules are changed to make it easier to vote, people with higher levels of political interest are most likely to take advantage of the rule change. The less interested, in contrast, lack sufficient levels of interest to be engaged, even when barriers to participation are reduced. From this perspective, it seems plausible that when democratic institutions require additional effort from citizens, those institutions will elicit less support from people with low levels of interest in politics than from those with more interest. For many people, the desire to participate in initiative and referendum decisions probably corresponds with some level of political interest. Perhaps we should not be too surprised, then, to find some evidence here consistent with the cognitive mobilization thesis. Referendums and initiatives do require that citizens make more political decisions than they would have to do otherwise, and possibly require that they must also obtain additional cues and information to make such decisions. Although there is ample evidence suggesting that readily available cues assist people in making such decisions (Bowler and Donovan, 1998; Lupia, 1994), the act of participating in a referendum nevertheless presents the citizens with additional cognitive costs of participation. Unlike previous studies of attitudes about direct democracy, some of our findings are consistent with the idea that the politically interested and politically engaged, at least in some nations, are less sensitive to such costs, and, thus, more supportive of direct democracy. These findings are also consistent with other research suggesting that referendums may encourage the politically interested and educated to turn out at elections (Donovan et al., 2005). Results from this study also have implications for normative assessments of direct democracy. Our results provide little support for the idea that direct democracy may be used as a tool to mobilize those most peripheral to politics, nor do they demonstrate that direct democracy finds particular support on the far right of the ideological spectrum. This might be possible, but we find little support for those ideas here. This point is important. Although we do find some mixed support for the political disaffection thesis, the patterns we observe in our multivariate analysis suggest different conclusions than those reached by Dalton et al. (2001). Although we do find that frequent use of referendums had more opposition among those with a university education (in some nations), many of our multivariate findings fail to conform with the results they report from Germany and elsewhere in Europe.2

AT: No Solvency Process Manipulation[___]

[___] Statistical data shows that the desires of the majority are met.Matsusaka, 2005 (John G., Professor of Finance and Business Economics in the Marshall School of Business, Professor of Business and Law in the Law School, and President of the Initiative & Referendum Institute, all at the University of Southern California, Direct Democracy Works, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Volume 19, Number 2, Spring pg. 185206)Despite the concerns of special interest subversion, the evidence generally shows that direct democracy serves the many and not the few. Matsusaka (2004) examines fiscal data spanning the entire twentieth century at both the state and local level to determine whether the initiative promotes tax and spending policies favored by the majority or, as the special interest view maintains, leads to policies favored by a minority and opposed by the majority. The study first documents three significant policy changes brought about by the initiative: 1) spending and tax cuts; 2) decentralization of spending from state to local governments; and 3) a shift of revenue out of broad-based taxes and into user fees and charges for services. Numerous opinion surveys are then examined, which generally show that a majority of people favored the three changes brought about by the initiative. Thus, as far as fiscal policy is concerned, the initiative appears to have delivered policies desired by the majority.

AT: No Solvency Delays [___] The counterplan mandates the process begin immediately, but setup takes 90 days. Singer, 2011 (Bill, member of the Herskovits PLLC law firm, Time for a National Referendum on Economic Policy, Broke & Broker, August 8th, http://www.brokeandbroker.com/1013/national-economic-referendum-bill-singer)Let us then submit those proposals to a popular vote with the requirement that the two plans receiving the most votes after a primary-type ballot would then be ultimately submitted to the American public for a vote within, say, 90 days. During that interim, Congress would be welcome to draft a super-majority counter-plan that would be listed on the same final ballot. It would be an interesting challenge to the House and Senate to see if they can forge a single piece of legislation that the public will support.

[___] Implementation only takes two days.Shermer, 1969 (Shermer, Ph.D. Govt Studies American University, American Referendum Association, The Sense of the People)Probably the best answer to this seemingly valid argument is contained in the following statement of the late U.S. Sentaor Jonathan Bourne, Jr., in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Sept., 1912, issue: In my opinion, the individual voters of the state (Oregon) in the quiet of their own homes in the evening could better consider and decide upon an average of one bill in two days than members of the legislature, amid the hurry and strife and personal feeling incidence to a legislative session, could consider and decide upon an average of twelve bills a day. It is erroneous to assume that the voter is required to pass upon a large number of measures in the few minutes he occupies the booth on election day. Such is not the case. He has several weeks to determine how he will vote, and merely takes a few minutes in which to mark his ballot. To support his contention, Senator Bourne added, that in one year (about 1911) each member of the Oregon Legislature had to consider five hundred bills in forty days (approx. twelve per day), plus political questions, resolutions, and problems of parliamentary procedure. With todays shorter work week, and tomorrows thirty-hour-week resulting inevitably from automation, it is not a question of whether people have the timethe question is whether they have the inclination. The referendum system is designed to create the desire and the incentive to study the issues.

AT: No Solvency Rollback[___] Precedents are already set rollback only occurs when the results of the ballot are unconstitutional or not deemed procedurally valid, and standards check.U.N. Commission for Human Rights, 2001 (U.N. Commission for Human Rights, Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights; Guidelines for Constitutional Referendums at National Level; Adopted by the Venice Commission at its 47 th Plenary Meeting; 07/6-7/2001; accessed 07/07/2015; .)I. THE GENERAL CONTEXT Recent experience of constitutional referendums in the new democracies has highlighted a number of issues which the present guidelines seek to address. These guidelines set out minimum rules for constitutional referendums and are designed to ensure that this instrument is used in all countries in accordance with the principles of democracy and the rule of law. Constitutional referendums are taken as referring to popular votes in which the question of partially or totally revising a State's Constitution (and not of its federated entities) is asked, irrespective of whether this requires voters to give an opinion on a specific proposal for constitutional change or on a question of principle. By definition a constitutional referendum is concerned with a partial or total revision of the Constitution. A constitutional referendum may : be required by the text of the Constitution which provides that certain texts are automatically submitted to referendum after their adoption by Parliament (mandatory referendum); take place following a popular initiative : - either a section of the electorate puts forward a text which is then submitted to popular vote; - or a section of the electorate requests that a text adopted by Parliament be submitted to popular vote; be called by an authority such as : - Parliament itself or a specific number of members of Parliament; - the Head of State or the government; - one or several territorial Entities. Constitutional referendums may be held both with respect to texts already approved or not yet approved by Parliament. They may take the form of : a vote on specifically-worded draft amendments to the constitution or a specific proposal to abrogate existing provisions of the Constitution; a vote on a question of principle (for example: "are you in favour of amending the constitution to introduce a presidential system of government?"); or on a concrete proposal which does not have the form of specifically worded amendments, know as a "generally worded proposal" (for example: "are you in favour of amending the Constitution in order to reduce the number of seats in Parliament from 300 to 200?"). It could be a question of a legally binding referendum or a non-legally binding referendum II. GUIDELINES A. Legal basis The following issues must be expressly regulated at constitutional level: - types of referendum and the bodies competent to call a referendum; - the subject-matter of referendums; - the effects of referendums; - general norms and principles (point II.B), including the franchise; - the main rules governing procedural and substantive validity (points II.C and II.D); - judicial review (point II.P). All the guidelines outlined below should be covered by the Constitution or legislation. B. General norms and principles 1. The constitutional principles of electoral law (universal, equal, free, direct and secret suffrage) apply to referendums. 2. Equally, fundamental rights, especially freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and freedom of association must be guaranteed and protected. 3. The use of referendums must comply with the legal system as a whole and especially the rules governing revision of the Constitution. In particular, referendums cannot be held if the Constitution does not provide for them, for example where constitutional reform is a matter for Parliament's exclusive jurisdiction. 4. Judicial review should be available in the field covered by the present guidelines.

AT: No Solvency Experts Key[___] Experts overestimate their own knowledge, have tunnel vision, and engage in group think. Engaging the public is key to involve public values and create more popular policies.Shane, 2012 (Peter M. Shane, Chair in Law at the Moritz College of Law of Ohio State University; Cybersecurity Policy as if Ordinary Citizens Mattered: The Case for Public Participation in Cyber Policy Making pg 455-458; Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society; 09/02/2012; accessed 07/01/2015; < http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/students/groups/is/files/2012/02/9.Shane_.pdf>.)The most intense objections from agency policy makers are likely to appear in the form of doubts as to the utility of deliberation with non-experts. In research I did in 2009 on early efforts by the current Federal Communications Commission (FCC) leadership to expand public input in FCC decision making,72 a number of senior staff expressed genuine uncertainty as to the role non-expert opinion was supposed to play in their decision making. In the words of one staff member, Arent we supposed to be the expert agency? Whats the general public going to tell me about the hard technical choices we face that I do not already know?73 Such an objection, however, ignores two critical points. The first is that decision making confined to experts is prone to its own kinds of deficiencies. Happily, evidence does suggest that experts are less likely to make certain sorts of predictable errors, such as overestimating the likely recurrence of vivid events, and more likely to gain some adaptive ability to overcome erroneous judgments as a result of repeat encounters with specific factual scenarios.74 Experts, however: are subject to three distinct biases of their own. First, they are likely to overestimate their actual knowledge. In the experimental setting, they demonstrate levels of confidence in their judgments that exceed the actual advantages conferred by their expertise, the propensity to be "often wrong, but never in doubt." Second, they are likely to adopt a world view that turns largely on the area of their expertise and are unable to weigh its relative merits against other matters outside the zone of their expertise . . . Third, and relatedly, they are subject to routinized ways of approaching problems and to an unreflective "group think" style of inbred behavior.75 Melding expert analysis with broad-based deliberation can help offset each of these biases. Indeed, public deliberation may be critical for countering the tendency among experts to pose problems solely within the technical frameworks with which they feel most comfortable. Whether to devote public resources to better firewalls, for example, or to various kinds of workarounds that would permit critical infrastructure to function even in the face of cyber aggression is a determination as likely to involve political, social, and economic tradeoffs as it is a technical assessment regarding the possible success of such strategies. So are decisions regarding our national doctrine on cyber war, investments in systems designed to improve cyber attribution, the allocation of cyber authority among military and civilian authorities, and the scope of presidential authority over the Internet. One does not have to impute ill motive to imagine how specialists in law, economics, military science, and information science might be tempted to characterize these issues as ultimately about legality, efficiency, operations research, or sound management. All of these disciplines are implicated, but so are public values regarding liberty, privacy, accountability, and competing priorities. These values should not be subordinated in the creation of public policy. The second point is that good design for a policy process intended from the outset to accommodate non-expert policy input is quite likely to improve the quality of the relevant technical analysis as well.

AT: No Solvency No Direct Democracy[___]

[___] Direct referendums can enact positive law or repeal and veto existing laws and bills, and they encourage the best voter turn-out.DuVivier, 2006 (KK DuVivier; Professor of Law at University of Denver; The United States as a Democratic Ideal?: International Lessons in Referendum Democracy p 845-848; University of Denver Sturm College of Law; 2006; accessed 07/01/2015; .)B. Effect of Referendums: Binding v. Advisory Referendum outcomes vary. Some bind or make their terms obligatory. Others simply advise and allow legislators and executives to retain some discretion over implementation. Binding referendums compel governments to implement them.162 What the referendum compels the government to do, however, depends on the process established. The direct referendum provides the most common binding process and becomes positive law once passed.163 Switzerland, Australia, and approximately half of the states in the United States offer this direct referendum process.164 The opportunity for citizens to flex their muscles in this way encourages use: Switzerland and Australia account for the most frequent referendums on a national level.165 Likewise, Oregon, California, Colorado, North Dakota, and Arizona historically represent states with the highest initiative use, and all offer direct initiative processes.166 Italy has used a unique version of the direct initiative. Article 75 of Italys Constitution contains the referendum abrogativo, which allows citizens to nullify legislation enacted at the national level.167 This veto can apply to all or portions of legislation. Because the process allows citizens to negate actions by the legislature and because the threat of a referendum veto has often motivated the parliament to act, commentators have argued that it has done much to serve the long-term interests of the Italian people and has transformed Italy from a partyocracy to democracy.168 The effectiveness of this process has made Italy the European country with the second highest use of referendums, surpassed only by Switzerland.169

AT: No Solvency No Intrinsic Benefit[___]

[___] Direct democracy is the best form of decision making in government.Robinson, 2007 (Nick, Yale Law School, J.D., Citizens Not Subjects: U.S. Foreign Relations Law and the Decentralization of Foreign Policy, Akron Law Review, 40 Akron L. Rev. 647)The argument in this article for local democratic participation is also, perhaps primarily, a humanist one. With more possibility for participation, we become thicker citizens. We have greater ability to engage in our communities and in turn more control over and understanding of our own lives as humans. For Durkheim, government had its own consciousness. Such a characterization highlighted that although government at its root might merely be a shared idea in a community of conscious humans, it could also have its own agency. The state had its own logic that was removed, and even unknown, from those that "thought" government into existence. He writes of a democratic state that "the closer communication becomes between the government consciousness and the rest of society, and the more this consciousness expands and the more things it takes in, the more democratic the character of the society will be." n14 For Durkheim, it is the democratic state's reflection upon its citizens through its citizens that gave democracy a moral superiority. n15 [*655] When we debate where and how democratic governance will occur, we are battling over what choreography of thought will define our state and we as citizens. Such stakes are not easily quantifiable. If our aim in structuring governance, however, is not to reach definable utopias, but rather to balance as best we can the competing interests and tensions of being human and being governed, then we must take into account governance's transcendent depths and not just its readily chartable currents.

AT: No Solvency Not Allowed[___]

[___] Nothing in the Constitution forbids this.Tutt, 2014 (Andrew Tutt, law clerk in Washington, D.C. and a Visiting Fellow at the Yale Information Society Project.; McCutcheon Calls for a National Referendum on Campaign Finance (Literally); Columbia Law Review; 10/2014; accessed 07/06/2015; .)But the analysis is somewhat more difficult when one speaks of the possibility of a binding national referendum, where a laws legal force is conditioned on its endorsement by a majority of voters during, for example, a national presidential election.27 Nothing in the Constitution affirmatively precludes such an outcome, and indeed, tens of thousands of laws are conditioned on the actions of some other party before they take effect. Many regulatory delegations, for example, provide that they will not bind regulated parties until such time as the administrator of the agency charged with administering the regulatory program takes certain ministerial actssuch as promulgating a regulation implementing the statute.28 In principle, a national referendum is entitled to analysis under the same logic. If such a law were passed, Congress and the President, in their collective judgment, will have elected to delegate to the People themselves the decision of whether the law should or should not bind them.29 There are limits to this principle, however, though where they are to be found is a complex question. For instance, both the legislative veto (by which Congress allowed itself to veto a law at a later date) and the line-item veto (by which the President was authorized to pick and choose which parts of each law he would veto) have been held unconstitutional because they violate the Constitutions deep structural principles.30 In light of these cases, it can safely be said that any law that meddles with how the Constitution fundamentally works is vulnerable to collateral constitutional attack on structural and separation-of-powers grounds.

AT: Solvency Turn Capitalism[___]

[___] Money has little proven influence in referenda. The most popular option garners the most monetary support, increasing access to popular majority viewpoints to all participants.Stratmann, 2005 (Thomas Stratmann, Department of Economics, George Mason University; The Effectiveness of Money in Ballot Measure Campaigns pg 103-104; Symposium on the Impact of Direct Democracy; 09/02/2005; accessed 07/03/2015; http://www.gmu.edu/centers/publicchoice/faculty%20pages/stratmann/vitae%20files/effectmoney.pdf)On one side of the debate on money in ballot measure campaigns are those who are concerned that interest groups have too much influence in the process.7 This side of the debate is concerned about the influence of money on outcomes. Spending by wealthy or well-funded interests may give those interests an advantage with respect to the passage or defeat of ballot measures over those who do not have the financial means to present their views though an advertising campaign. Some claim that if those who spend are more likely to win, than those without the financial means to compete are limited in their political participation. David Broder for example, suggests that the initiative process has become the favored tool of millionaires and interest groups that use their wealth to achieve their own policy goals.8 Broder continues to argue that initiative campaigns have become a money game, where average citizens are subjected to advertising blitzes of distortions and half-truths and are left to figure out for themselves which interest groups pose the greatest threats to their selfinterest.9 As mentioned in the Introduction, the academic literature has found little evidence that interest groups can purchase their preferred policies through the initiative process. The literature has found that money has only a small influence on whether initiatives pass. Campaigning to maintain the status quo is more successful than campaigning to change it and successful campaigning in part depends on the type of interest groups involved. Moreover, even if there was evidence that the side which spends more money is also more likely to win, this does not necessarily imply an inequality in access to political participation. The reason that the winning side spends more simply reflects that this side represents the views of many voters and thus was able to attract many funds.

AT: Solvency Turn Poverty[___]

[___] Democratic inclusion is the only way to solve poverty and limited political engagement.Weeks, 2014 (Daniel Weeks, former president of Americans for Campaign Reform and a fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University; How to Solve America's Democracy and Poverty Crisis; The Atlantic Politics Division; 01/10/2014; accessed 07/06/2015; .)However you slice and dice the numbers, people in poverty are at a serious, structural disadvantage when it comes to making their voices heard and having their interests represented in Washington. They are far from equal citizens in the public square. A democracy problem requires a democracy solution. Just as the gains made during the first decade of the War on Poverty cannot be separated from another pair of bills Johnson signed into lawthe Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965so too must the work of combatting systemic poverty today confront the lack of political equality for all. Fortunately, democratic-process reforms abound. If states are the laboratories of democracy, then we need look no further than American states that effectively enable their citizens to participate in public life for examples to introduce to the nation as a whole. Not surprisingly, politically inclusive states also experience considerably lower levels of poverty and higher voter turnout than other states. Some reforms are simply a matter of equal justice under law. Denying approximately 10 million taxpaying U.S. citizens the right to vote or voting representation in Congress, because of a prior conviction or the district or territory in which they live, is morally and constitutionally suspect. To right the first of these wrongs, all states should ensure that voting and other constitutional rights are restored to people with felony convictions once they have completed their sentence and reenter society. In no instance should a former felon be permanently disenfranchised under the Constitution. State legislation or a constitutional challenge or amendment could accomplish this task. Likewise, Congress should pass a law granting voting representation to Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and the territories in the House and Senate. A constitutional challenge or amendment based on Equal Protection could also accomplish the task.1 | Page