ABSTRACT
The Progressive Era experiment with direct democracy has failed, at least when it comes to the protection of minority rights. Direct democracy is fundamentally askew or in conflict with the fundamental insights of constitutional Framers who better understood the problem of politics. The threat to American democracy was especially manifested in how this concentration in wealth and power was a corrupting influence, affecting the purity and morality of its political institutions. In juxtaposition to Madisonian democracy which sought to limit the threat of majority faction by creating a complex political machinery with representative government. In its 1978 decision First National Bank v. Bellotti, the United States Supreme Court declared that money on ballot initiatives was core political speech. As Justice Robert H. Jackson so eloquently stated, certain rights should not be decided at the ballot box and going forward, initiative and referendum should exclude votes on any propositions that deal with minority rights.
