Tune up the Hiram-mobile
RIGHT NOW, I’m fantasizing about the coming charisma wars under the Capitol dome in Sacramento. Affable Arnold Schwarzenegger versus Jesuit Jerry Brown. The bodybuilder versus the yoga lover. The Hummer fancier versus the rust-bucket Plymouth devotee. The paterfamilias living in the Brentwood compound versus the newlywed living in the hardware department of a converted Sears store in Oakland. The Republican who’s laid claim to the Pat Brown legacy versus the Democrat who’s Pat Brown’s only son.
But I’m going to be responsible here. Substantive. And I promise to do it quietly; we’re suffering from voter hangover, mostly from the death march through those 13 statewide propositions and whatever local measures were along for the ride. And, hangover-like, who can remember how we voted just two days ago? (Here’s a reminder -- you voted yes on the bond measures and no on all the rest, except the initiative to tighten the legal cuffs on sex offenders. Does any of that ring a bell?)
When I wrote about the pitfalls of propositions a couple of weeks back, I was surprised by the volume and vehemence of readers’ e-mails. People love the idea of do-it-yourself democracy, of sticking it to the powers that be. But the mechanics of the props? Infuriating. Too many of them. Too many complicated matters put to a yes-or-no vote. Too sweeping in scope, or too micromanaging. A lot of readers are so irritated they just rip their way down the ballot and vote no on every measure.
Surely it doesn’t have to be that way. California initiative voters are driving a 95-year-old jalopy, a Hiram-mobile, the vehicle of political reform assembled in 1911 by Gov. Hiram Johnson. The Hiram-mobile “runs good” for the most part, but a little tinkering with the undercarriage wouldn’t hurt.
Jack M. suggested a ban on the paid signature gatherers, the itinerant “Have Bic, Will Travel” multitudes who move from election to election, parking lot to parking lot. If a proposition is worthy, Jack believes, it should have supporters willing to expend some free sweat to put it on the ballot.
Jeff S. didn’t mind the paid signature gatherers, but he wants every proposition to have to declare right up front if it qualified thanks to those paid pens. Doug P. thinks a measure should have to qualify for the ballot in a majority of California’s 58 counties, not just thanks to signature-fishing expeditions conducted in populous urban counties.
Is any of this feasible? I went to the go-to guy on initiatives to find out. John G. Matsusaka heads the Initiative and Referendum Institute at USC. For starters, South Dakota and Oregon had the initiative years before California, so you can stop feeling sorry for yourself -- Oregonians, not Californians, have had to cast their glazed eyes over the most ballot measures: 331 to our 306.
And Matsusaka has a “sneaking suspicion” that when people say they want to “improve” the initiative process, they want to “make it harder for issues they don’t like to get on the ballot.”
Well, sure. As the T-shirt says, It’s All About Me.
Still, it’s not like there aren’t some other models to test drive. For example, California judges almost always defer to any initiative that manages to work its way onto the ballot; judges in other states have no problem yanking iffy measures out of contention.
Some states put certain topics off limits. They don’t let initiatives dictate state spending, for one. Californians do that all the time, budgeting by ballot, like Proposition 98, which long ago set minimum school spending.
In some states, you can’t pass an initiative unless you also OK a means to pay for it, so the ballot doesn’t wind up reading like a kid’s letter to Santa. Other states ban the “deja vu do-over” proposition -- like the parental notification proposal that California defeated last year and again Tuesday. In other states, you can’t put essentially the same measure on the ballot less than, for example, five years apart.
Nevada, home of the drive-through wedding chapel, wants to make sure you really, really meant that vote, so a proposition must pass twice, in back-to-back elections -- a sober measure to stave off one-night-stand voting.
I don’t think we’ll ever diddle with the initiative process. For one thing, we haven’t so far, and, as Matsusaka says, “voters are going to be suspicious of anything that curtails [their] power.” As it turns out, the only way to amend the initiative is, you guessed it, by initiative.
Besides, before every election we throw ourselves a pity party -- oh poor me, having to study all these issues and stand in a voting booth for all of five or six minutes to decide these props. (I’m as guilty as anyone, and I do it in print.)
And then afterward, as the post-election beta endorphins flood our brains, we tend to congratulate ourselves on having once again picked our way through the political IEDs on the ballot without losing more than a couple of toes. Aren’t we great -- the wily California voters have beaten their own system, again.
I’ll stop now. For a year or so.
So, back to Arnold and Jerry -- can we vote on which smells worse, cigar smoke or incense?
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