History of direct democracy in the United States

The history of direct democracy amongst non-Native Americans in the United States dates from the 1630s in the New England Colonies. Many New England towns still carry on that tradition in the form of open town meetings.

Beginning in 1878, millions of American farmers began banding together to break the post-Civil War, small-farmer enslaving crop-lien system with co-operative economics. When they were bested by corrupt and abusive practices of the national financial sector, they attempted to improve their circumstances by forming the People's Party and engaging in populist politics. Again they were bested, this time by the country's mainstream two-party system. However, the Progressive Era had just begun. Before it ended, it would become one of the greatest democracy movements in recorded history.

Fired by the efforts of millions of farmers, exposes written by investigative journalists (the famous muckrakers), and correlations between special interests' abuses of farmers and special interests' abuses of urban workers, Progressives formed nationally connected citizen organizations to extend this democracy movement. From 1898 to 1918, the Progressives, supported by tens of millions of citizens, forced direct democracy petition components into the constitutions of twenty-six states.

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