Portland Press Herald: Last year, South Portland residents faced a tough, up-or-down vote. The citizen initiated Waterfront Protection Ordinance would effectively ban the use of the local harbor to export oil derived from Canadian tar sands, but it also had the potential to ban much more.
It was a classic pitfall of direct democracy which demands a yes-or-no answer to a complex question, often written entirely by one side of the debate. As written, the ordinance could have been used to limit imports as well as exports,...