Last week, the Stoughton City Council decided to put two non-binding referendums on their April 3 ballot: one to pull all troops out of Iraq and another calling for the impeachment of President George W. Bush.

Last year, 162 cities across the country had referendums calling for a withdrawal of troops in Iraq, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Last April, 24 cities in Wisconsin — including Madison — passed non-binding referendums against the war, and in November, Milwaukee and other municipalities across the state joined them. Last Friday, the House of Representatives passed its non-binding resolution condemning President Bush's plan of sending 21,500 additional troops to Iraq, and Senate Democrats are battling with Republicans to bring a similar measure to the floor.

So what?

If the goal of these ballot measures is to bring awareness to the dissatisfaction that the town or county's residents feel, then 162 cities across the United States have succeeded in making the rest of the country aware of their opinions. Their votes are a symbolic gesture — nothing more, nothing less. But if the true intent of a non-binding measure is to actually bring the troops home, these ballot measures are missing the point.

A referendum can be a powerful way of giving legislative power directly to the people. In the November election, Arizona, Nevada and Ohio all passed bans on smoking in public places. Voters in six states also approved measures indexing these states' minimum-wage laws to the rate of inflation. These measures brought the power directly to the people to enact legislation that state and local governments have not or will not pass.

Often, both parties use ballot initiatives in order to bring more of their voter base to the polls. While referendums are used by Democrats to get more of their base to vote, Republicans have also used the same tactic. While it may not have helped Wisconsin Republicans in the last election, the constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman and the advisory referendum reinstating the death penalty were used partially to draw to the polls more voters who have a personal interest in specific issues.

The power of these referendums is the fact that the people get to decide for themselves on issues in which they are truly interested. Ultimately, the voters are voting on what will become law soon after the election. The people of Ohio felt it was important to raise the minimum wage themselves instead of waiting for Congress to do it. Last Tuesday, two Wisconsin school districts voted for increased spending measures in their districts while two voted them down. A binding referendum is so effective because voters are casting ballots that will affect them directly in terms of new laws, new schools or new taxes.

When a referendum is non-binding, it is nothing more than a symbolic vote. The residents of Madison, Milwaukee and the 160 other cities across the United States may think that voting on a non-binding resolution condemning the war in Iraq truly is an accomplishment. And the residents of Madison may have felt that their 68 percent vote for the referendum may be enough to sway politicians 850 miles away in Washington into voting against the war. For their vote on a non-binding resolution, the people of Madison have been rewarded with an increase in troop levels in Iraq and the citizens of Stoughton will likely see the same result from their vote in April.

As Congress and communities across the nation continue to expend their efforts on non-binding resolutions, realistically, nothing will continue to get done in terms of the war in Iraq. While 162 referendums, poll numbers and voting the Republicans out of the majority in both houses of Congress should have been clear signals of the will of the American people toward the current Iraq policy, they are not.

For those who believe that the people have done something besides showing their displeasure about the war in Iraq, continuing action with non-binding referenda will not slow or stop the war effort. Instead of voting on a non-binding referendum, the citizens of Stoughton would accomplish more by pushing their senators and representatives to vote on something that is binding — something that will do more than a simple vote on current policies of the Bush Administration.

Jeff Carnes ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in linguistics.