Giving American Direct Democracy
by Direct Democracy

Here are some of the articles which caught the attention of Senator Mike Gravel and other supporters of the effort to introduce a national initiative process.

Prospects For Reforming The Initiative Process, by Elizabeth Gerber, June 6, 2000. A paper presented at the National Direct Democracy Conference, University of Virginia Center for Government Studies

It is the People who are inherently invested with all authority and legislative power to create and alter governments, constitutions, charters, and laws. This observation is so fundamental that is it known as the First Principle of governance. It is an axiom; the First Principle cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption. In contrast, constitutions and governments are inherently derivative.

The National Initiative proposal is the product of a long process of critical evaluation. The Constitution does not currently offer lawmaking by initiative; many people have proposed such an addition. The National Initiative is the current and most viable effort to date.

The NI4D Precis of the Development of National Initiative will clarify that the names of the National Initiative has a two track history. First with respect to it’s name and second as to it’s organizational, i,e. corporate history.

The Democracy Symposium was held on February 16, 2002 in Williamsburg, Virginia.

The two pages below contain the same Democracy Act and Democracy Amendment that are being voted on except that these pages contain all the annotations that have come from the Democracy Symposium of 2002 and other historical comments such as David Parrish's explanations.  The annotations are visible by pressing the "View Comments" link at the top-right of each section.

• The Annotated Democracy Amendment
• The Annotiated Democracy Act