The Dilemma of Direct Democracy

The dilemma of direct democracy is that voters may not always be able to make welfare-improving decisions. Arthur Lupia's seminal work has led us to believe that voters can substitute voting cues for substantive policy knowledge. Lupia, however, emphasized that cues were valuable under certain conditions and not others. In what follows, we present three main findings regarding voters and what they know about California's Proposition 7. First, much like Lupia reported, we show voters who are able to recall endorsements for or against a ballot measure vote similarly to people who recall certain basic facts about the initiative. We show, second, that voters whose stated policy preferences would otherwise suggest they would favor the “no” position cast their ballots with far less error than do people who favor the “yes” position. This suggests that many voters may employ a “defensive no” strategy when faced with complex policy choices on the ballot. Our third result is a bit surprising: we find that ...