Word: referendum
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...respect of much of the populace - enough so that the constitution was amended to allow him a second term. But he wanted a third term and, with approval ratings at about 70% throughout 2009, seemed on the verge of winning it when Colombia's Congress called for a national referendum on the issue. For a year, the country's politics was in a state of limbo as the legislature, the courts, the press and the public debated whether to allow Uribe to run again. Late on Friday, the answer came down as a resounding...
...country. Libya immediately retaliated, freezing all visas of citizens belonging to the 25 European countries (including Switzerland) that belong to the continent's shared visa system, called Schengen. The dispute rose above personal issues into an affront against Islam in early February, when Swiss citizens voted in a national referendum to halt the construction of minarets...
...some of which can come crashing down on a state capitol like a tsunami. The so-called Progressive Era in U.S. history (from the 1880s to the 1920s) bestowed the secret ballot and direct elections for the U.S. Senate and the city manager, as well as the initiative, the referendum and the recall. The latter, of course, transformed Arnold Schwarzenegger the movie star into Arnold the Gubernator when the actor became California governor after voters chose to recall Democrat Gray Davis. (Read "How California's Fiscal Woes Began: A Crisis 30 Years in the Making...
Instead of turning to the initiative system, Paul and his New American colleague Joe Mathews recommend making more use of the referendum. "It's easier to write a new law, an initiative, than hold a referendum on a law the legislature has passed. Today, we have voters making laws. A better system is for voters to pass judgments on laws." At the moment, though, referendums have the same 5% signature requirement that initiatives do. Paul and Mathews suggest lowering that to 1%. They also suggest revising the initiative itself, requiring sponsors to submit them to the legislature, where lawmakers would...
...protests may come with an ancient Zoroastrian fire festival that takes place in mid-March, just before the Persian New Year, around the start of spring. Meanwhile, opposition websites and social-media channels cited a meeting between Mousavi and Karroubi this week that had Karroubi calling for a referendum on the popularity of Ahmadinejad's government. But that muffled noise is all that can be mustered nowadays. Speaking via official media, Rafsanjani may be signaling, louder than he has since the crisis began, that the time for squabbling should come to an end with some kind of compromise so that...