The San Francisco Chronicle thinks the California state constitution is too easy to amend. It's been amended more than 500 times. The paper doesn't say it outright, but it might make sense to make it more difficult to qualify a constitutional amendment for the ballot, while making it easier to qualify an initiative statute. The constitutional change requires more signatures -- a number equal to 8 percent of the number of votes cast in the most recent gubernatorial election -- than the initiative -- 5 percent.

I've been wrestling with what the best formula would be. I think that if certain kinds of initiatives are to be more difficult, thus limiting the people's ability to legislate or amend the constitution directly, then it ought to be much easier for the people to overrule the legislature via referendum. How about rolling back that current requirement for signatures -- now 5 percent of the gubernatorial votes -- to something like 1 percent?