Referendum

A referendum (plural: referendums or less commonly referenda) is a direct vote in which an entire electorate is invited to vote on a particular proposal. This may result in the adoption of a new law. In some countries, it is synonymous with a plebiscite or a vote on a ballot question.Referendums is logically preferable as a plural form meaning 'ballots on one issue' (as a Latin gerund, referendum has no plural). The Latin plural gerundive 'referenda', meaning 'things to be referred', necessarily connotes a plurality of issues.I think referendums are awful. The late and great Julian Critchley used to say that, not very surprisingly, they were the favourite form of plebiscitary democracy of Mussolini and Hitler. They undermine Westminster. What they ensure, as we saw in the last election, is that if you have a referendum on an issue, politicians during an election campaign say: 'Oh, we're not going to talk about that, we don't need to talk about that, that's all for the referendum.' So during the last election campaign, the euro was hardly debated. I think referendums are fundamentally anti-democratic in our system, and I wouldn't have anything to do with them. On the whole, governments only concede them when governments are weak. A referendum (plural: referendums or less commonly referenda) is a direct vote in which an entire electorate is invited to vote on a particular proposal. This may result in the adoption of a new law. In some countries, it is synonymous with a plebiscite or a vote on a ballot question. Some definitions of 'plebiscite' suggest it is a type of vote to change the constitution or government of a country. The word, 'referendum' is often a catchall, used for both legislative referrals and initiatives. Australia defines 'referendum' as a vote to change the constitution and 'plebiscite' as a vote which does not affect the constitution. whereas in Ireland, 'plebiscite' referred to the vote to adopt its constitution, but a subsequent vote to amend the constitution is called a 'referendum', as is a poll of the electorate on a non-constitutional bill. 'Referendum' is the gerundive form of the Latin verb refero, literally 'to carry back' (from the verb fero, 'to bear, bring, carry' plus the inseparable prefix re-, here meaning 'back'). As a gerundive is an adjective, not a noun, it cannot be used alone in Latin, and must be contained within a context attached to a noun such as Propositum quod referendum est populo, 'A proposal which must be carried back to the people'. The addition of the verb sum (3rd person singular, est) to a gerundive, denotes the idea of necessity or compulsion, that which 'must' be done, rather than that which is 'fit for' doing. Its use as a noun in English is not considered a strictly grammatical usage of a foreign word, but is rather a freshly coined English noun, which follows English grammatical usage, not Latin grammatical usage. This determines the form of the plural in English, which according to English grammar should be 'referendums'. The use of 'referenda' as a plural form in English (treating it as a Latin word and attempting to apply to it the rules of Latin grammar) is unsupportable according to the rules of both Latin and English grammar. The use of 'referenda' as a plural form is posited hypothetically as either a gerund or a gerundive by the Oxford English Dictionary, which rules out such usage in both cases as follows: It is closely related to agenda, 'those matters which must be driven forward', from ago, to drive (cattle); and memorandum, 'that matter which must be remembered', from memoro, to call to mind, corrigenda, from rego, to rule, make straight, those things which must be made straight (corrected), etc. The name and use of the 'referendum' is thought to have originated in the Swiss canton of Graubünden as early as the 16th century. The term 'plebiscite' has a generally similar meaning in modern usage, and comes from the Latin plebiscita, which originally meant a decree of the Concilium Plebis (Plebeian Council), the popular assembly of the Roman Republic. Today, a referendum can also often be referred to as a plebiscite, but in some countries the two terms are used differently to refer to votes with differing types of legal consequences. For example, Australia defines 'referendum' as a vote to change the constitution, and 'plebiscite' as a vote that does not affect the constitution. In contrast, Ireland has only ever held one plebiscite, which was the vote to adopt its constitution, and every other vote has been called a referendum. Plebiscite has also been used to denote a non-binding vote count such as the one held by Nazi Germany to 'approve' in retrospect the so-called Anschluss with Austria, the question being not 'Do you permit?' but rather 'Do you approve?' of that which has most definitely already occurred. The term referendum covers a variety of different meanings. A referendum can be binding or advisory. In some countries, different names are used for these two types of referendum. Referendums can be further classified by who initiates them: mandatory referendums prescribed by law, voluntary referendums initiated by the legislature or government, and referendums initiated by citizens. A deliberative referendum is a referendum specifically designed to improve the deliberative qualities of the campaign preceding the referendum vote, and/or of the act of voting itself.