Renzi urged yes supporters to "stay calm", however unsexy their message.
And in places like California, where government by ballot question is a way of life, costly advertising campaigns in which wealthy individuals and interest groups urge "yes" or "no" votes are protected by the First Amendment.
The Times urges a yes vote on Proposition 30.
McCain has deftly shifted gears and urges a "yes" vote on Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action initiative on the Arizona ballot in November.
In Cartagena on Monday, huge billboards urged a "yes" vote.
In an emotional appeal aimed directly at the Greek people the president of the European commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, urged a "yes" vote next weekend to what he described as a fair proposal – "not stupid austerity".
Two former Greek prime ministers, Kostas Karamanlis and Antonis Samaras, both of the centre-right New Democracy party, are urging a yes vote, saying that a return to the drachma would kill the Greek economy.
Now, too, the trade unions want devolution and will urge a "yes" vote, says Alan Rappell of GMB, a union with 55,000 Welsh members.Yet an audience of only eight people at a public meeting on June 24th to set up a "Yes for Wales" campaign group in Cwmbran suggests that they have a lot of apathy to overcome.
Particularly in Maryland, which has a significant black population, their brighter electoral prospects probably owe something to the support from President Obama, from the N.A.A.C.P., which came out in favor of same-sex marriage in May, and from civil-rights leaders like Julian Bond, who's just made a commercial urging a yes vote on Question 6 in Maryland.
He gave endless media interviews and appeared in a TV ad with his mother-in-law, urging a yes vote on Question 2. Question 2, which would have allowed doctors to prescribe drugs with which terminally ill patients could end their lives, drew less national attention than Elizabeth Warren's Senate victory.
