A legislative act is referred for final approval to a popular vote by the electorate

Usage examples of referendum.

I would not for a moment be thought to say that those who are in favor of more democracy, through the initiative and referendum, are factionalists, and insincere in their view that that system will work a good result in the fight against corruption in politics.

Wilson, yeilded to the pressure and declared the state seperate from the Union, but in a referendum vote the citizens overwhelmingly refused to join the Confederacy.

Having regard to what I had said in the autumn of 1944, I had the feeling that we ought to ask the electors to approve by a referendum, or in some other way, this limited but reasonable prolongation of our tenure.

In 1846, however, Congress authorized a referendum on the question of retroceding Alexandria County to Virginia, and declared that jurisdiction should be relinquished to that State if a majority of the voters in the county voted in favor of the change.

It said that anyone wishing to sign the petition calling for a referendum on the maintenance of slavery in Sardonyx Sector should see the proprietor of the store.

August 1931, to capitalise on their growing popularity, the Nazi Party launched a referendum to overthrow the Social Democratic government of Prussia.

Under his proposal, no park could be leased, built upon, or turned over to a commercial enterprise without a countywide referendum.

National Executive Committee at its session in Chicago, May 24 to 30, expelled without a trial the state organization of the Socialist Party of Michigan, constituting about 6,000 members, suspended the Russian, Lithuanian, Lettish, Polish, Hungarian, Ukrainian and South Slavic Federations of the party, constituting more than 30,000 members, and worst of all--and let it be said to their everlasting shame--are autocratically holding up the national membership referendum for the election of a new National Executive Committee, International Delegates, International Secretary, and the holding of a national convention.

Most of these National Executive Committee members are out for re-election, are interested parties, knowing that the referendum defeated them for re-election, are now, by this action, perpetuating themselves in office.

The government is to consider a referendum on instituting a form of federal autonomy for the Matabele people, and, in return, I am to use all my influence to convince the armed dissidents to come in from the bush and surrender their weapons under general amnesty.

Fremont placed a referendum on the ballot so that the citizens of the entire state could vote on whether Genesis was correct or Darwin, whether God was supreme or some Communist atheistic humanists at Yale University.

There is no one for the Soviets to deal withleaders of sharply deteriorating caliber, beset by democracy, by politics, and doing six-month stints between midterm elections, lame-duck periods, and the informal referenda of American public life.

And a political scientist, Harlan Halm, doing a study of various city referenda on Vietnam, found support for withdrawal from Vietnam highest in groups of lower socioeconomic status.

In the election of 1980 that brought him into the Presidency, local referenda in three districts in western Massachusetts permitted voters to say whether they believed in a mutual Soviet-American halt to testing, production, and deployment of all nuclear weapons, and wanted Congress to devote those funds instead to civilian use.

Similar referenda received majority votes between 1978 and 1981 in San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Madison, and Detroit.