Part of the problem is the decisions of the US Supreme Court have codified a lot of unwritten rules to favor law enforcement/status quo - we would need a radical change in our form of government to undo this (the lifetime appointment of Supreme Court justices is one obstacle, along with the political nature of the job, the difficulty in removing a justice, that all bring to mind some sclerotic bureaucratic mess from a dystopia.) This overrides the influence any voter can have with local issues - their local and state governments cannot override these rulings with impunity.