REFERENDUM • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Referendum

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noun

Referendum n. (pl. referenda)

A diplomatic agent's note asking for instructions from his government concerning a particular matter or point.

The right to approve or reject by popular vote a meassure passed upon by a legislature.

The principle or practice of referring measures passed upon by the legislative body to the body of voters, or electorate, for approval or rejection, as in the Swiss cantons (except Freiburg) and in various local governments in the United States, and also in the local option laws, etc.; also, the right to so approve or reject laws, or the vote by which this is done. Referendum is distinguished from the mandate, or instruction of representatives by the people, from direct government by the people, in which they initiate and make the laws by direct action without representation, and from a plebiscite, or popular vote taken on any measure proposed by a person or body having the initiative but not constituting a representative or constituent body.

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Etymology of 'Referendum'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Referendum" Quotes from Famous Books

... larger libraries of New York—the Astor, the Mercantile, and the Columbia College—I found the principal descriptive and historical works on Switzerland. But from all these sources only a slender stock of information with regard to the influence of the Initiative and Referendum on the later political and economic development of Switzerland was to be obtained. So, when, three years ago, with inquiry on this point in mind, I spent some months in Switzerland, about all I had at first on which to base investigations ...

— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan

... State Legislation; The State Constitutions; When Statutes Should Be Unconstitutional; Effect of the Initiative and Referendum; The True Value ...

— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... pathological worship of mere number," writes Alleyne Ireland, "which has inspired all the efforts—the primary, the direct election of Senators, the initiative, the recall and the referendum—to cure the evils of mob rule by increasing the size of the mob and ...

— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger

... the Referendum has no counterpart in our own country, unless we except the somewhat unwieldy provisions in various States for the revisions of their constitutions by popular vote. It is undoubtedly the most successful experiment in applying the principles of direct government ...

— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... experiencing an upward surge of industrial development that seems certain to continue and is going to call for a great deal more water than can be counted on from present sources. Public awareness of this is shown by the fact that county citizens voted in a referendum in November of 1966 in favor of construction of a Federal reservoir at Verona near Staunton on the Middle River, which had been strongly opposed when it was presented as a part of the ...

— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... their own words, the Sandy Creek Association of Baptists (organized in 1758), in a series of papers known as Regulators' Advertisements (1766-8) proceeded to mature, through popular gatherings, a rough form of initiative and referendum. At length, discouraged in its efforts, and particularly in the attempt to bring county officials to book for charging illegal fees, this association ceased actively to function. It was the precursor ...

— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson

... the choosing of the members of both houses by the same electorate is in the same class, a perfectly irrational anomaly which violates the first principles of logic and leads only to legislative incompetence, and worse. The referendum is of precisely the same nature, but this already has become a reductio ad absurdum, and can hardly survive the discredit into which it has fallen. In any reorganization of government looking towards better results, these ...

— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... governmental system has been affected by the direct primary movements, the initiative and referendum, the commission form of municipal government, and new legislation regarding publicity of campaign expenditure and corrupt practices at elections. It is, however, the spirit and actual workings of our government that are emphasized, rather than its mere mechanism, thus adding to the interest of ...

— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber

... can reach him every morning. The valley is reached every day, just as the people in a pure democracy were reached by the ancient stentor. The people are reserving to themselves more and more of the function of their one- time representatives, in such measures as the referendum and initiative intimate, and are trying to secure more accurate representation in such systems as the direct primary and proportional representation suggest; but these all are possible only through the aid of the wheel and of what it has brought. ...

— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

Words linked to "Referendum" : vote