Facts and Arguments about the Introduction of Initiative and ...

that the system could hardly be used. More or less anything
concerning finance was excluded, as were town planning
proposals and one-off development proposals. The latter excluded,
for example, major projects such as the expansion
of the port or the construction of an additional tunnel under
the Elbe river. In order to obtain a referendum, no less than
10 percent of the people entitled to vote had to go to the town
hall to submit their signatures within 2 weeks. At city level
there was a virtually unachievable approval quorum: citizens’
initiatives which contained an ordinary legislative proposal
must, besides gaining a simple majority of the votes, also be
approved by 25 percent of all the people entitled to vote, while
citizens’ initiatives that wanted to change the constitution not
only had to secure a two- thirds majority of the votes, but also
be approved by 50 percent of all the people entitled to vote.
Mehr Demokratie then decided once again to use the bad referendum
instrument to obtain a better referendum. Together
with several local partners, it drew up two citizens’ initiatives:
one for the introduction of direct democracy at the district
level, and a second for improving the existing system at the
city level. Because the second citizens’ initiative required a
constitutional amendment – and thus the sky-high authorisation
quorum had to be obtained – the activists aimed to
combine their referendum with the national parliamentary
elections of 1998. The beginning was laborious; there were
only a couple of thousand marks (about one thousand euros)
as initial capital and some of the partner organisations
wanted to postpone the entire campaign to the future. Collection
of the first 20,000 signatures required could only commence
in May 1997, and the activists had to hurry if they
still wanted to combine the initiative with the elections. This
time pressure actually seemed to work to their advantage.
The majority of the signatures were finally collected in the
second half of the campaign. By autumn 1997, no less than
30,000 signatures had been gathered for submission. At the
discussions in the parliament, several members of the parliament
said that they considered the citizens’ initiatives to be
contrary to the constitution. But the stipulated period within
which the initiatives should have been presented to the Constitutional
Court for its ruling was allowed to expire.
Thus the initiative moved into its second stage, in which 10
percent of the eligible voters (120,000 people) had to go to
the town hall or the municipal offices to give their signatures
in the two weeks from 9 to 23 March 1998. Mehr Demokratie
was helped because the municipal authorities sent a postcard
to all those entitled to vote announcing the citizens’ initiatives
and saying where and when the signatures of support
could be given. On the back of the postcard was an example
of how to express support by post. This provision had, incidentally,
been approved in the 1996 law and was completely
unique in Germany. The atmosphere was quite tense because
the municipal authorities only wanted to make a single
announcement of the intermediate position at the end of the
first week. However, the second stage was a resounding success:
by the first intermediate position (after 5 days), 85,000
citizens had already supported the initiatives and at the close
of signature collection on 23 March, the number had risen to
more than 218,000 (18.1% of the people entitled to vote) for
the first initiative (for referendums at the district level) and
more than 222,000 (18.4%) for the second initiative (direct
democracy at the city level).
At first, the city council had wanted to hold the referendums
shortly after the national parliamentary elections. This was
initially a setback for the people at Mehr Demokratie, but they
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recovered rapidly and lobbied the members of parliament to
combine the elections and the referendums on the grounds
that a lot of citizens’ time and public money (because of the
higher costs) would otherwise be wasted. The lobbying was
successful and the referendums were eventually combined
with the parliamentary elections of 27 September 1998.
In the meantime, as in Bavaria, Mehr Demokratie had put together
a large coalition of all kinds of – mostly small – social
organisations. Nevertheless, they had to take on the two major
parties in Hamburg – the SPD and CDU – as well as the
chamber of commerce and the powerful Bild-Zeitung newspaper
belonging to the Springer group. The combined opposition
beat their big drums with slogans such as: “Minorities
will be bullied”, “Referendums with low turnouts lead to
sham democracy”, “The port and airport will be paralyzed by
tighter noise legislation” and “The beginning of a fatal development”.
Newspaper advertisements warned that an ‘activists’
dictatorship’ would be introduced if the Mehr Demokratie
proposals were to be adopted. “No ‘argument’ was too primitive
not to be brought out”, writes Efler (2001).
In Hamburg, the parliament has the right to put a counterproposal
to the vote at the same time as the citizens’ initiative.
The parliament presented its counter-proposal only
four weeks before the referendum. The citizens’ initiative
wanted referendums on ordinary laws to be decided by a
simple majority and constitutional amendments by a twothirds’
majority, with no further turnout requirements. In
the parliamentary counter-proposal, the high thresholds
mainly remained intact: ordinary laws had be adopted by
a majority that constituted at least 20 percent of all those
entitled to vote, and amendments to the constitution by a
two-thirds’ majority that constituted at least 40 percent of
all eligible voters. Thus if 70 percent voted for an amendment
to the constitution, the turnout would have to be almost
60 percent to reach the 40 percent minimum share
of the total eligible electorate. The citizens’ initiative wanted
to partly abolish the taboo on financial matters, whereas the
parliamentary counter-proposal wanted to exclude all subjects
that had an effect on the budget. “What important issue
nowadays has no effect on the budget?”, Efler asked (2001).
Because the subject and the differences between the two
proposals were quite technical, and there was little time for
a full campaign because of the parliament’s delaying tactics,
Mehr Demokratie focussed on highlighting the differences
and comparing the two proposals point for point, adding the
question: Why would politicians surrender power voluntarily?
Mehr Demokratie also made its campaign very visual: it
used images of ballot papers marked in support of the initiatives
in its newspaper and cinema advertisements and on
posters which were put up on referendum day in front of
all the polling stations. On voting day, 27 September 1998,
74.0% of the voters voted for the Mehr Demokratie proposals
at the city level, and 60.0% for the same at the district level.
The turnout was 66.7%. This meant that the high approval
quorum was reached for the referendum at the district level,
because it would be introduced by means of an ordinary law,
but not for the referendum at the city level, for which the
constitution had to be amended. The parliament’s delaying
tactics meant that voters received their referendum material
– which could also be used for a postal vote – much later
that that for the simultaneous parliamentary elections. Mehr
Demokratie subsequently calculated that if the referendum
material had been sent at the same time as the election material,
the approval quorum would also have been obtained
for the proposal for the city level.