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By Willian C. Shelton

“I know of no safe repository of the ultimate power of society but the people.”

-Thomas Jefferson

American democracy is now under constant assault and is contracting. Yet the proposed City Charter that will be on the November 4^th ballot would deny Somerville’s citizens a critical right that is enjoyed by voters in 83% of Massachusetts’ cities.

It is the right of direct democracy. New Englanders pioneered direct democracy in the 1600s. They discussed the issues of the day in town meetings, culminating in votes on policy.

As theirs and other colonies became restive under British domination, American leaders worked to become the world’s most learned citizen-scholars regarding political philosophy and practice.

Two hundred and fifty years ago this fall, they were writing colonial constitutions that would eventually guide them as states. Thomas Jefferson argued that the people themselves were sovereign. James Madison would subsequently elaborate on this principle in Federalist Papers 41.

Massachusetts was the first to hold a statewide referendum. In 1778, its citizens ratified what is the second-oldest constitution in continuous effect on the planet. (Vermont’s was the first.)

Over the next century, the essential long-term dynamic of the economic system that had created individual freedom’s possibility produced its opposite. Conditions created by all-powerful robber barons curtailed the choices of ordinary Americans, producing stark inequality and debased democracy.

By the 1890s, Gilded Age corruption dominated many state and local governments. The Populist and Progressive movements emerged to demand secret ballots, direct election of Senators, women’s suffrage, and above all, direct democracy through initiative and referendum.

In 1897, Nebraska became the first state to allow cities to place initiative and referendum in their charters. South Dakota’s voters adopted it statewide the next year. Twenty-four states would eventually follow.

Teddy Roosevelt told the Ohio constitutional convention, “I believe in the Initiative and Referendum, which should be used not to destroy representative government, but to correct it whenever it becomes misrepresentative.”

So in 1918, Massachusetts voters adopted Article 48, giving them the power to propose and approve new laws and reject existing ones. Since then, Massachusetts voters have, among other things,

• Surtaxed incomes over $1 million (2022);
• Established the right to a clean environment (1972);
• Identified and cleaned up hazardous waste sites (1986);
• Invested highway taxes in mass transit (1974);
• Legalized and taxed cannabis (2016);
• Eliminated MCAS as a graduation requirement (2024);
• Regulated dental insurance (2022);
• Audited the legislature (2024); and
• Protected free speech (1948).

The people produced these reforms because the legislators couldn’t or wouldn’t. Too many legislators see direct democracy as an affront to their power. They resist the understanding that the people only lend their sovereignty to them for the length of their terms in office. They are vulnerable to special interests in a way that individual citizens are not.

The current Somerville Charter was shaped by such special interests. It is a Gilded Age document, adopted in 1899 when real-estate interests dominated our city government. But by 1913, Villens were already chafing under a government that invested almost all power in a strong mayor. So they designed a commission form of government, but their proposed charter died in the Legislature the next year.

In 1981, Somerville’s Board of Aldermen again produced a comprehensive charter revision.  But State Senator Dennis McKenna killed it when it came to the legislature. It would have eliminated elected tax assessors, which included Assessor Bobby Campo. Campo’s daughter was married to Dennis McKenna’s son, Alderman Michael McKenna. Bobby and Michael were subsequently convicted on corruption charges.

The charter now before the voters reproduces many concepts and long verbatim passages from the 1981 proposed charter. Unlike that document, it excludes the right of direct democracy that is guaranteed in 49 of 59 Massachusetts cities’ charters.

As these numbers suggest, the right of initiative and referendum seems to be popular. Among the current field of Somerville Councilor-at-Large candidates, only Ben Wheeler opposes it.

But Somerville’s Charter Commission excluded it from consideration. The only argument that I have heard is that ballot initiatives may be too divisive. As if voters are impulsive children who require legislators’ adult supervision to prevent us from savaging each other. Voters in those 49 Massachusetts cities appear to have avoided such a fate.

Of course, most Somerville voters will never know what has been denied them. They will never receive the summary of what’s in the charter and arguments for and against that are required for all state-level ballot measures.

City officials somehow overlooked explaining to voters the document that will define their city’s government. When the City Council realized this oversight, its response amounted to, “Oops.” This alone should discredit the coming Charter vote.

American democracy is under attack from gerrymandering, voiding the Voting Rights Act provisions; eliminating voting locations, times, and methods; silencing government watchdogs; assaults on academic freedom and mass media; prosecutorial persecutions; disinformation campaigns; domestic military deployments; blatant violation of legislative mandates; and mass mendacity by government officials.

Although democracy’s domain is contracting, we could expand it at the local level. But approval of the proposed charter would deny us that opportunity. I will not collaborate.