Although they received little attention, the most important ballot initiatives in November’s elections dealt with eminent domain—the power of the government to take your property. The initiatives reacted to a 2005 Supreme Court decision, Kelo v. New London, that ruled that the U.S. Constitution permits states to transfer land from one private party to another to promote economic growth. Kelo caused a justifiable uproar: if states can take a person’s real estate whenever someone else stands ready to improve it, then the bedrock commitment to private property is gone, and the market system it supports is placed at risk.

The trend of putting policy questions on the ballot began in the early 20th century as a check on corrupt state legislatures. More recently, the technique has been used successfully to advance conservative measures, such as California’s Proposition 13 in 1978 , which limited property taxes.

Critics say the initiatives—supported by a cottage industry of lawyers, signature-gatherers, and political consultants—circumvent reasoned debate and are won by whichever side has the most money. You might say the same for Senate campaigns, but the amounts spent on initiatives can be far greater. For example, the two sides fighting over last year’s Prop 8 7 in California, which would have taxed oil companies and used the proceeds to promote alternative energy, spent over $150 million, a record. (The proposition lost.)

Critics of referenda say there’s a good reason the framers conceived this country as a representative republic, not a direct democracy: busy Americans seldom have time to sort out the details of complex policy issues.

But despite such criticism, voters proved discerning. Activists in some western states tried to hitch a broader agenda to the anti-Kelo star by proposing “regulatory takings” measures that would require compensation whenever new regulations diminished the value of private property. Such restrictions would have made many government functions, such as local zoning, prohibitively costly.

Regulatory takings measures failed in three states (California, Idaho, Washington) out of four (the other was Arizona), even as every one of the plainer anti-Kelo measures passed comfortably (in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oregon, and South Carolina). Voters aren’t so foolish after all.