Last weekend, the German city-state of Hamburg joined a distinguished club of "NOlympians," voting by 52 percent against seeking to host the 2024 Olympics. Perhaps making such votes obligatory for all bidding cities could be the first step toward restoring the tattered reputation of global sporting events.
The history of Olympic plebiscites began on Dec. 10, 2002, when Vancouver's city council decided to hold a non-binding public vote on whether the Canadian city should bid for the 2010 Olympics. Ten weeks later, the bid's supporters carried the day by 64 percent to 36 percent. It was a resounding victory, but, as Harry Hiller pointed out in his 2012 book "Host cities and the Olympics: An Interactionist Approach": "The plebiscite legitimated the Olympics as controversial from a city resident's point of view. If it was necessary to take a vote, the implication was that there must be something that was not obviously acceptable about hosting the Olympics."
In later years, such votes were less successful for the advocates of Olympic bids. In 2014, bids for the 2022 Winter Olympics were rejected by 70 percent of the voters in Krakow, Poland; 53 percent in St. Moritz and Davos, Switzerland; and 52 percent in Munich, Germany. Oslo pulled its bid after grassroots votes in the main political parties failed to support it.