Fifty Windows on the World

By Kathleen Kingsbury

Think globally, act locally. That's the message as more and more communities turn to nonbinding ballot initiatives to chime in on national and foreign policy. In Wisconsin last week, residents of 24 counties passed resolutions calling for U.S. troops to pull out of Iraq, joining dozens of towns in Vermont that have passed similar measures. Seven states--Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana and Vermont--and nearly 400 counties have voted either to criticize or ignore the Patriot Act. Come November, voters in localities across the U.S. will be asked to say yea or nay to affirmative action, abortion and embryonic-stem-cell research. "All of these are very personal issues. Who better to decide them than citizens themselves?" asks Archon Fung, a government professor at Harvard. "This is true direct democracy."

Except, of course, that these resolutions have only symbolic power--and real policy change still has to come from state and federal governments. "Referendums are the protest vehicle for the new century," says Elizabeth Garrett, director of U.S.C.'s Initiative and Referendum Institute. "People are dissatisfied with federal leadership, and voting is the best way they know to voice it." Lawmakers rarely take heed of such ballot measures, but maybe they should. The initiatives bring voters to the polls--turnout in Baraboo, Wis., tripled this election cycle. "More votes," says Garrett, "is a message politicians on every level understand."