Ballot Initiative

Updated: The San Diego Union-Tribune is engaged in a curious war over a very old question: when is an increase in spending a cut in spending? The added wrinkle is that the paper is focusing on education spending in California, and that takes us back to the education spending formula -- and incomprehensible morass -- known as Proposition 98.

To help the easily confused, this is a different Prop 98 than the eminent domain measure that will appear on your ballot this June. (Every decade or so, the Secretary of State busts open the odometer of blockbuster democracy, and resets the Proposition numbers at 1).

The education funding formula Prop 98, passed by California voters 20 years ago, is one of the two ballot initiatives that has the most influence over how our state is governed. The other, Prop 13, passed by voters in 1978, limits how fast taxes can go up, and requires a two-thirds vote of the legislature to pass a tax increase. (Two-thirds for passing a budget came decades earlier). Taken together -- and they must be considered together -- Props 13 and 98 represent the central problem of California budgeting and finance, and thus reflect what the voters want: 1. Limits on taxes, and 2. ever escalating spending on the government programs people most cherish.

BAR CODES: Ghana considers adding bar codes to its ballots to protect against errors and fraud.

TAIWAN REFERENDUM DIDN'T MEASURE UP: Foreign observers took a hard look at procedures in the Taiwanese referenda on joining the U.N., and didn't like what they saw.

NO VOTE ON OIL PIPELINE: The Bulgarian opposition has blocked an effort to let Bulgarians vote on whether to establish an oil pipeline. The pipeline has been passed by Parliament. The winner? Vladimir Putin.  Russia can use the pipeline to send its oil from the Black Sea to the Aegean.

JOINING THE IRISH? Czech communists are proposing a national referendum of the Lisbon Treaty.

MONKS BARRED FROM BALLOT: Burmese monks won't be able to vote in their country's constitutional referendum, an election that clearly won't meet any common sense standard of fairness.

Your blogger simply can't get enough news of the wolf-heavy ballot initiative politics of Alaska. In this latest development, legislators are trying to slip through a bill that effectively would remove the ability of voters to decide how wolves are hunted. Fortunately, the Anchorage Daily News is calling them on it.

A top Democratic consultant in California suggests keeping a close eye on this initiative that appears on its way to the November ballot. The measure, backed by animal rights' groups including the Humane Society, would put limits on how farm animals may be confined. The agriculture lobby is rallying to defeat it. But even in an era where more than 70 percent of California initiatives fail, this measure is considered likely to pass.

Odds and ends from the past week...

TELL US WHAT YOU REALLY THINK: Steve Maviglio, Democratic political operative and aide to Speaker Fabian Nunez, unloads on the Foundations for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, now called Consumer Watchdog. The group is putting together a ballot initiative on health care. 

EMINENT DOMAIN MEASURES: As the California press corps withers, Capitol Weekly gets stronger. This past week, the newspaper has an excellent account of the back-and-forth over two competing eminent domain measures on the June ballot, Propositions 98 and 99. In brief, backers of Prop 98 (supported by an anti-tax group) are accusing backers of Prop 99 (supported by California cities) of "astro-turfing," the practice of using deceptively-named organizations with no real members.

WOLVES!!! A new development in the wolf wars in Alaska. A judge says the government can continue to shoot wolves from the air, though he invalidated the practice in certain parts of the state. The question of such aerial hunting -- to reduce the wolf population and protect caribou and other species -- goes to voters in the Last Frontier in August.

Interest groups and politicians often get what they want simply by threatening an initiative or referendum. They never bother to go through with the campaign.

In Massachusetts, a supporter of Gov. Deval Patrick's plan to license three casinos in the state is threatening to take the idea to the people if it fails to get through the legislature. Massachusetts has the referendum and the initiative, but the power is weak in the state constitution. Such a vote might likely be advisory.

Julie Soderlund, press whiz and top-notch consultant for the California Dream Team, Governor Schwarzenegger's political committee, has been sending out newspaper editorial after newspaper editorial endorsing the governor's latest effort to take reapportionment out of the hands of the California legislature.

Reapportionment reform is a good idea, sure. Legislators drawing their own districts is a conflict of interest, and a lack of political competition -- exacerbated by a bipartisan gerrymander in 2001 -- is a significant factor in California's legislative gridlock. And most of the editorials make strong points. But they don't make much difference.

In 2005, Schwarzenegger backed Proposition 77, another reapportionment reform initiative. And he had the endorsements of every significant newspaper in the state. Of the 36 largest papers in California, Prop. 77 was endorsed by... 36.

Papers of every ideological stripe backed it. It lost anyway. Voters either didn't understand the issue, or didn't care. Democrats argued it was a right-wing power grab. Look for apathy (recession and budget revenues will outweigh redistricting in voters' minds) and partisan objections to sink this measure too. It's become almost an iron law of California politics: reapportionment measures fail.

In Colorado, state legislators are trying to head off a possible Humane Society ballot initiative that would require veal calves and pregnant pigs to be kept in housing that allows them to stand up and turn around.

Why the desperation to stop the Humane Society? Because when the society goes to the ballot, it usually wins.

No organization has a better record at the ballot than the Humane Society of the United States, the true champion of direct democracy. Between 1990 and 2006, HSUS won more than two-thirds of its ballot measure campaigns. (26 out of 38). In most of those efforts, the Humane Society has been on the "yes" side, and "yes" campaigns are far harder to win than "no" campaigns. (About two-thirds of ballot initiatives lose). At the ballot, the Humane Society successfully has sought to ban dove hunting, horse slaughter, cockfighting, and confinement of animals.

Oh, the outrage! Opponents of ballot initiatives love to complain about underhanded tactis in the collection of the signatures. Credulous newspaper reporters (I once was one) often fall for it. The outrages seem so immense: The petitions have duplicate signatures! There are signatures from people who aren't registered to vote! In the youtube era, the newest thing is to post video of signature gatherers, in some dismal supermarket parking lot, misrepresenting -- or, gasp, lying about -- the initiative's intent as they attempt to get signatures. Unbelievable!

Better to take a deep breath and challenge the lousy initiative on the merits. Every petition ever collected has signatures with problems. That's why proponents typically secure about 50 percent more signatures than is legally necessary. If 70 percent of the signatures collected on an initiative or referendum petition turn out to be valid, that's an excellent, honest petition.