Ballot Initiative

Remember the attempt to qualify a California ballot initiative to allocate the state's electoral votes to the winner in each Congressional district, instead of to the statewide winner? Democrats naturally fought back, because their nominee would lose votes in such a scheme. Among their tactics was to complain to the FEC that then-presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani and his financial backer Paul Singer had violated the law by setting up a company in Missouri to make donations to the initiative effort. The FEC has cleared Giuliani and his presidential commitee of any wrongdoing in the matter. The decision is here.

What would the crime have been? Under federal election law, as amended by McCain-Feingold, candidates for federal office can't participate in non-federal elections. The idea was to close a loophole in the campaign donation limits and prevent federal candidates and committees from skirting the limits by using state committees and campaigns. The ban would seem to apply to state and local ballot initiative campaigns, but the FEC has been divided on the questions of whether initiatives count. The decision in the Giuliani matter doesn't clarify this point. It simply says there's no evidence that Giuliani or his committee was involved in this particular initiative.

The conservative Weekly Standard takes a look at Prop 107, the 2006 Arizona initiative that failed to ban same-sex marriage, and Prop 102, the 2008 Arizona ban that passed. What was the difference? The 2006 ban would have barred domestic partnerships. The 2008 initiative protected domestic partnerships. Also, the Standard quotes a leader of the no campaign as saying that fundraising was weak because California's No on Prop 8 campaign soaked up so much money. If that's true, it means the disastrous No on 8 campaign in California was responsible not only for the setback for marriage equality in California but also for the defeat in Arizona.

Liberals and Democrats in Southern California have been meeting to talk about initiative reform. Here's an update of what they're up to, via the Calitics blog.

The ballot initiative, scheduled to be on the city of Los Angeles ballot in March, sounds good. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power would have to install enough solar panels atop buildings to produce 400 megawatts of electricity. But Los Angeles Times columnist Tim Rutten suggests it's a dirty deal. There's no limit on how much electric rates will go up to pay for this. And he suggests the whole thing has been cooked up by the union representing DWP workers--and the very smart political consultants who represent them--as a way to take more money from citizens and give it to some of the best-paid unionized workers in town. Expect to hear more about this.

Ventura County, California -- north and west of Los Angeles -- has become a hotbed of anti-growth ballot initiatives -- measures passed by environmentalists or businesses to prevent other businesses from coming into a particular community. Most of these measures do this by way of requiring a vote of the people on certain kind of developments above a certain size. The latest is in the city of Ventura, within the county of the same name. Its target is Wal-Mart. But this measure doesn't offer a way to override the limit. It simply bans any store that sells groceries and is larger than 90,000 square feet.

Rich Raddon, a devout Mormon who leads the L.A. Film Festival, resigns under fierce criticism for his financial donations to Yes on Prop 8. Same-sex marriage supporters -- that is opponents of the recently passed Prop 8 -- are targeting leaders of arts groups and companies who gave to the other side. In most cases, the support for Prop 8 was based on religious beliefs.

This is madness, and is all but certain to boomerang against the cause of marriage equality. How can you call for tolerance of difference, and convince people that same-sex marraige is no threat to anyone's religion, when you're hounding people for their religious views? Here's hoping that the festival urges Raddon to come back, immediately. And here's also a bit of a mathematical reminder to the self-sabotaging same-sex marriage supporters behind these purges: elections are won by convincing people to join your cause. All your energies should be directed to making new friends, not identifying enemies. 

The Advocate deconstructs the failed No on 8 campaign to defeat the California initiative ban on same-sex marriage -- and points some fingers. In particular, the Advocate blames the leaders of bisexual, gay and lesbian groups that led the campaign committee. This squares with my own reporting on the subject. These activists didn't reach out and bring in top political folks until it was too late. The Advocate adds fuel to the fire by reporting that two of these leaders -- Lorri Jean of the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center and Geoff Kors of Equality California -- took long summer vacations. People running big campaigns typically wait until the election is over to do that sort of thing.

After multiple delays, a hearing was held Nov. 18 to decide whether U.S. Term Limits founder Paul Jacob and two veteran political pros who were helping him qualify an initiative in Oklahoma, Susan Johnson and Rick Carpenter, should stand trial on charges that they conspired to bring out-of-state signature gatherers to the state. But the hearing didn't conclude. It has been postponed until early 2009.

The case is based on a law barring out of state signature gatherers. The law is almost certainly unconstitutional, and it's likely a matter of time before charges against the three -- dubbed the Oklahoma 3 by their supporters -- are dropped. More here.

In California and Arizona, there's more and more talk of fixing the initiative process. Here are two editorials published this weekend, one from the paper in Monterey, California, the other from Tuscon, Arizona. I think initiative reform is needed, but I don't think it has much chance. There's no consensus on what reform should look like, or even why reform is needed (some think the process too restrictive and too expensive, others think it too cheap and easy)

This Oakland Tribune story, which quotes your blogger, suggests a number of factors, including the inflexibility of California's initiative system. It's so hard to change initiatives via other means that the default position is to go to court.