Majority rule and special interest politics can threaten individual rights. Madisonian democracy addresses this threat through constitutional mechanisms such as a bill of rights, checks and balances, and representation. The Progressive Era reforms of initiative, referendum, and recall were adopted as a means to further democracy and break entrenched politics captured by interest groups. Yet it is not clear if these experiments in direct democracy have protected rights, let alone confined special interest politics. Using the 2012 Minnesota constitutional amendments on marriage and voter ID as examples,, this paper argues that elections, constitutional politics, and the use of initiative and referendum have generally failed to further rights and instead have undermined the goals of Madisonian democracy.