My response to TVB's response

Dear [TVB],

Thank you so much for your response. I want to thank you for producing shows that encourage voting. Produced well, these shows provide a great service to the public.

I also reviewed the show and agree that the segment in question pertained to the role of referendums, defined widely to include initiatives, propositions, and "actual" referendums.

State referendums deal with state issues. Even in rare cases where referendums touch federal issues, are the results even binding or enforceable? Using sophisticated concepts like "constitutional amendments" and "presidential impeachment" and "federal" phrases like "100 senators" and "435 representatives" to explain referendum is confusing at best, and misleading at worst. "Federal" examples are inappropriate for that segment, if the goal is to keep it simple. Focusing on simple, state-level examples like state law and state spending would have been better choices.

Let me give you an example of how confusing that segment was. During the show, my wife - who is unfamiliar with politics - asked me, "Professor Tong just said that voters can impeach the President. If people in the US are so dissatisfied with Bush, why don't they impeach him?" Of course, I explain the actual impeachment process to her after the show. I would not be surprised if other viewers were confused as well.

Why explain referendum with rare events such as presidential impeachment when state spending is the common theme in many referendums? Consider this: When you try to explain the role of the Secretary of State, do you say "the fourth person in line to be President" or "the head of the State Department"? Both are true; but I certainly hope that you mention the latter first. Yet, based on the way Professor Tong explained referendum, I won't be surprised if he mentions the former first. And unfortunately, due to time constraint, he may not have time to mention the latter.

I applaud your effort in seeking examples to justify Professor Tong's points, though I am doubtful these examples were what he had in mind as he explained the role of referendum. Here are my responses to some of them:

"... On the federal level, Art. 5 of the US Constitution provides for a special convention to ratify a U.S. Constitutional Amendment as an alternative for Congressional approval."

Article 5 does say that – however, it does not explicitly describe how such a special convention would work. In other words, a state-wide popular vote might be involved, or it might not be. In any case, it is such a fine point that I hope Professor Tong did not have Article 5 in mind as he attempted to explain referendums to the general Chinese viewers.

"... On the state level, some states (e.g. Massachusetts) provide for a state-wide vote to approve U.S. Constitutional Amendments."

Unfortunately, Massachusetts' state-wide voting on U.S. constitutional amendments is advisory only. (Source: http://www.sec.state.ma.us/ELE/elebalm/balmover.htm) Without researching further, I would think that "advisory" means non-binding. In any case, I hope Professor Tong would agree that this example is too narrow in scope to explain the general role of referendum to general viewers.

"... But some state legislations also stipulate the rights of citizens to introduce initiatives in ballots calling for the impeachment of the U.S. President and Vice Presidents, as many local electorates have done in recent years."

While this is true, when was the last time such an "impeachment" initiative was put on the state ballot? In public service programs, shouldn't common examples (e.g., state spending) trump the obscure ones? Keep it simple, remember?

"... He agrees with you that few of the propositions involve conflict of interest, and believes that it has been used by special interests to end-run the legislative process."

This makes me wonder why Professor Tong decided to spend several sentences on "conflict of interest" and zero time on special interests. Or was this an oversight during post-production editing?

"... In trying to keep it simple for our general viewers, it might have appeared to be simplistic for you."

I completely agree with you that public service programs should be simple, NOT sophisticated. No, it was not simplistic for me. In fact, when Professor Tong used federal issues such as impeachment and U.S. constitutional amendments to explain referendum, I was confused. I would suspect that even sophisticated viewers were confused as well. Linking referendum to national politics and constitutional law is exactly the kind of sophistication we don't need in service programs aimed at the general public.

I have confidence that Professor Tong is well-versed in American politics. As such, I will have to believe that the confusion in the segment was due to editing. In public service programs, leaving out confusing and potentially misleading portions is probably the best policy. If one has to resort to little-known cases or special examples to support or explain a point, that point is likely too confusing to the general viewers.

Thank you.
-M.W
P.S. There is a confusing ad about "the one vote in Tennessee that gave women the right the vote." Since the goal of the ad apparently is to encourage voting, one would likely assume that the one-vote difference was in the state-wide election. Yet, the fact is that the one-vote difference happened in the state legislature. I asked a couple of people and they were surprised as well.

Link:
TVB's response to "Comments on <<我們有權選總統>>"