It still starts with 500 people and ends with 15% of the public making the decision. We have to strike a balance—we discussed this in Committee, and I do not want to give a blow-by-blow account of that very long debate—over whether there should be any constraints at all and whether there can be any trivial or vexatious cases. That is the difference.
In Minnesota, several cases have been deemed to be unreasonable. The two most recent cases involved State Representatives Ward and Radinovich, both of whom
supported same-sex marriage against the wishes of their constituents, and in both cases, the court concluded that it did not constitute malfeasance, saying:
“Constituent disagreement with how their elected representative exercised discretion, through public statements made or votes taken, does not equate to malfeasance by the representative.”
That is surely a principle the House would want to stick to.
In 2001, the state attorney-general did not take steps to ensure that a ban on sodomy was not struck down—again there were complaints, but the court did not conclude that he had failed to do his job; and in 1999, Governor Jesse Ventura was accused of having done well out of his book by virtue of being governor, but again the court felt the accusation was unsubstantiated and struck it out.