of state citizens vote to affirm the law, the state legislature will be barred from ever amending the law, and it can be amended or repealed only if approved by a majority of state citizens in a direct vote. Automatic referrals An automatic referral is question that is legally required to automatically be placed on the ballot. Many states have laws in their constitution requiring a question to hold a constitutional convention to appear before the voters after a scheduled amount of time. Agricultural referendums The United States code requires national referendums before the authorization of marketing quotas for certain agricultural products including wheat, maize, milk, and rice. The responsibility of conducting these referendums is with the Secretary of Agriculture, and eligibility to vote is limited to producers of the agricultural product in question. A similar referendum system is in place for fishing quotas in both the New England and Gulf fishery management councils. Referendum law by state Objections to the system The initiative and referendums process have critics. Some argue that initiatives and referendums undermine representative government by circumventing the elected representatives of the people and allowing the people to directly make policy: they fear excessive majoritarianism (tyranny of the majority) as a result, believing that minority groups may be harmed. Other criticisms are that competing initiatives with conflicting provisions can create legal difficulties when both pass; and that when the initiatives are proposed before the end of the legislative session, the legislature can make statutory changes that weaken the case for passing the initiative. Yet another criticism is that as the number of required signatures has risen in tandem with populations, "initiatives have moved away from empowering the average citizen" and toward becoming a tool for well-heeled special interests to advance their agendas. John Diaz wrote in an editorial for the San Francisco Chronicle in 2008: In some cases, voters have passed initiatives that were subsequently repealed or drastically changed by the legislature. For instance, legislation passed by the voters as an Arizonan medical cannabis initiative was subsequently gutted by the Arizona legislature. To prevent such occurrences, initiatives are sometimes used to amend the state constitution and thus prevent the legislature from changing it without sending a referendum to the voters; however, this produces the problems of inflexibility mentioned above. Accordingly, some states are seeking a middle route. For example, Colorado's Referendum O would require a two-thirds vote