Yet our ballots are already too complicated. The great blanket sheets with
scores of officers and hundreds of names to be marked are quite beyond the
intelligent action in detail of nine men out of ten.

The most thoughtful reformers are already urging that the voter's task be
made more simple by giving him fewer things to consider and act upon at the
same time.

This is the substance of what is called the "Short Ballot" reform; and
it is right, for the more questions divide public attention the fewer
questions the voters really decide for themselves on their own judgment and
the greater the power of the professional politician.

There is moreover a serious danger to be apprehended from the attempt at
legislation by the Initiative and Compulsory Referendum, arising from its
probable effect on the character of representative bodies. These expedients
result from distrust of legislatures. They are based on the assertion that
the people are not faithfully represented in their legislative bodies, but
are misrepresented. The same distrust has led to the encumbering of
modern state constitutions by a great variety of minute limitations upon
legislative power. Many of these constitutions, instead of being simple
frameworks of government, are bulky and detailed statutes legislating upon
subjects which the people are unwilling to trust the legislature to deal
with. So between the new constitutions, which exclude the legislatures from
power, and the Referendum, by which the people overrule what they do,
and the Initiative, by which the people legislate in their place, the
legislative representatives who were formerly honored, are hampered, shorn
of power, relieved of responsibility, discredited, and treated as unworthy
of confidence. The unfortunate effect of such treatment upon the character
of legislatures and the kind of men who will he willing to serve in them