Thomas Linzey · Democracy: More than Voting

The right to vote is at the core of any healthy, functioning democracy. Yet, our democratic rights do not begin and end on Election Day.

In the United States, as in a number of other countries, “direct democracy” is increasingly recognized as an important way to make change. Direct democracy authorizes citizens to not only propose new laws, but to vote on them as well. Thus, it’s a way to exercise democratic decision making — for the people, and importantly, by the people — particularly when our elected officials fail to make the changes that “we the people” believe are necessary.

The movement for direct democracy gained force in the U.S. in the early twentieth century. The growing power of corporations over elected officials prompted efforts to establish a means for citizens to make democratic changes precisely when their representatives — who were busy prioritizing the interests of the few over the many — were not.