Citizen-Bred Initiatives Grow in Popularity Despite Uncertain Results : Politics: Many such propositions are overturned in court. Some are so long or badly written, voters say yes when they mean no, or vice versa. Others produce unintended results. Some do nothing at all.

The citizen initiative was meant to be a dandy democratic tool, enabling ordinary people to make laws and skip the long, deadly slog through the legislature and its obstacle course of compromise.

But when citizens try their hand at lawmaking, the results often look (and taste) homemade. Like cooks for a potluck supper, they can dish up the unexpected:

* When gleeful Oregon voters passed a property tax limit in 1990, who knew it would lead to teacher layoffs, crowded classrooms and parents in Beaverton running weekly Band Bingo just to keep the high school marching band in step?

* Floridians this Election Day approved a ban on gill nets from state waters. Good for the fish, but analysts say it will put many people out of work and double the price of cheap fish on which the poor depend.

* California’s tax-limiting initiative, Proposition 13, has been a boon to lawyers, prompting dozens of lawsuits. And in the 16 years since it passed, voters have tried to tinker with it 16 times with clarifying ballot measures.

Many citizens’ initiatives are overturned in court. Some are so long or badly written, voters say yes when they mean no. Or vice versa. Others produce results voters may not have intended. Some do nothing at all.

Step onto a bus in Los Angeles and you’ll see two posted greetings: “Welcome Aboard” and “Bienvenidos.” So much for the voters’ verdict, in 1984 and again in 1986, that English should be California’s official language.

But do not underestimate the power of citizen initiatives. Win or lose, they rattle the country with political shock waves.

“It’s become an alternative means to do politics,” said David Magleby, chairman of Brigham Young University’s political science department.

“Those people who wanted to make an issue out of immigration found a gold mine in Proposition 187,” he said, citing as the latest, best example the California ballot measure that got the whole country talking.

Presumably, California voters who approved Proposition 187 expected to deny illegal immigrants most public services, including schooling, and to require teachers and others to turn in suspects.

Now facing a slew of court challenges, the measure may ultimately prove illegal. Whatever happens, the authors of Proposition 187 succeeded in drawing national attention to immigration issues.

Initiatives, said Magleby, are “a bellwether. They are a harbinger. Legislators all over the country are going to be talking about illegal immigration.”

Term limits, tax limits, gay rights and the anti-gay rights backlash, the nuclear freeze, anti-smoking measures--all were ballot initiatives that resonated nationwide.

Last year’s 73 were a record, according to the Public Affairs Research Institute of New Jersey. Compare that with the 253 measures between 1900 and 1939, the 248 from 1940 to 1980 and, now the 424 since 1981.

“In general, there seems to be increasing tendency for legislatures to defer actions to the initiative process, to allow decisions to be made through referenda,” said Donald Linky, the institute’s president.

Frightened of volatile and vengeful voters, lawmakers don’t like to risk their careers on hard decisions, preferring to leave them to voters, he said.

That fear makes Barbara Vincent happy.

“If we do not transfer power from the government to people, where it belongs, we’ll lose our country,” said Vincent, who runs the nascent National Referendum Movement out of a converted garage in Memphis.

“Right now, a few people are making decisions for everybody else,” said Vincent, who describes herself as a “fortyish . . . free-lance writer” and unhappy with this current form of representative democracy.

For now, 24 states allow the voters to write laws. Vincent and other advocates of what is sometimes called direct democracy or the fourth branch of government want that right extended to residents of every state.

And they want a national initiative and referendum, as well.

“We’re the real legislators,” she said. “Common sense resides at the grass-roots. Taxpayers’ eyes are everywhere and we can see all the solutions.”

U.S. Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) tried to interest the last session of Congress in a national initiative and referendum, but failed. “The idea is too radical at the national level, though it’s well understood at the state level,” he said.

Hoping for a better reception from the new Congress, Hoekstra said he wants to see attached to any budget balancing bill an amendment requiring a national referendum on any tax increases Congress proposes.

The idea, he said, is to “get people more involved in the process.” And while some observers applaud the theory, they are appalled by the reality.

“The real problem is the people are presented with a yes or no choice on a matter that is extremely complex and drafted on someone’s kitchen table,” said Charles Hinkle, lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union in Portland, Ore.

Unlike laws that get chewed over by the legislature, with a citizen initiative, Hinkle said, “there is no compromise, no opportunity for refinement.”

Besides the courtroom tie-ups, the unpredictable results, the bad writing, students of the initiative cite other flaws: ballots overloaded with initiatives; the common use of paid circulators to gather the thousands of signatures needed, corrupting the cherished idea of the humble voter-activist; the use of the initiative to alter venerable constitutions.

Sometimes the authors of initiatives come not from the grass-roots but the executive suite. Last year, tobacco companies put up a ballot initiative hoping to relax California’s impending workplace smoking ban, and failed.

And in Ohio and Arkansas, soft drink bottlers asked the public to repeal a tax on their products. (Ohio voters lifted the tax; Arkansas voters said keep it.)

Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate in Washington, believes initiatives should require a 60% supermajority for passage.

“People ought to have the outlet of the initiative process,” Gans said, “but it shouldn’t be easy, because more often than not the initiative process leads to lousy legislation.”

Magleby suggests limiting initiatives to an advisory referendum “where the questions are very simple and where the voters vote for change that is a mandate.”