Maryland just came off of a pretty historic Election Day, with residents voting on referendums that legalized same-sex marriage, expanded gambling, approved redistricting, and offered in-state college tuition rates to undocumented immigrants who graduate from Maryland high schools. That’s great, right?

Sure, but Gov. Martin O’Malley thinks that putting issues to the voters is simply to easy in the Old Line State. “We’ve been best served in our state over the 200 or more years of our history by a representative democracy, rather than plebiscites,” Gov. Martin O’Malley told WBAL, according to an article published today by the Examiner.

Apparently O’Malley’s grief—and he’s not alone—is that the Internet has made gathering the 55,736 signatures needed to put an issue to the voters significantly easier than when it had to be done by hand. The use of websites like MDPetitions.com made it easier for opponents of same-sex marriage and the DREAM Act to gather signatures to put the two laws on the November 6 ballot, so much so that over twice the amount of needed signatures were submitted. (Some of the measures, like gambling, were put on the ballot by the legislature.)

Of course, others say that it’s still plenty hard to get something on the ballot—much like in D.C., a wrong address or a hard-to-read name can be enough to disqualify someone’s signature.

It’s certainly an interesting debate. D.C., for one, makes it very hard to get anything on the ballot, and even then limits what can and cannot be voted on. Same-sex marriage, for example, could not be voted on because doing so would have violated provisions of the Human Rights Act. At the same time, referendums and initiatives put democratic power back into the hands of normal residents, for better or for worse.