Bill Boyarsky

For the weekend, here's a little bit of blockbuster democracy history, and a lesson about dual measures.

What do I mean by dual measures? It's a proven tactic in the ballot initiative game. If you oppose an initiative that's headed for the ballot, it may not be enough simply to fight the initiative directly. You may want to qualify your own initiative -- ideally, something that sounds similar and covers the same topic, but does something different than the initiative you oppose. Why bother with a counter initiative? Voters, faced with two like-sounding measures -- usually vote "no" on both. And so the initiative you opposed is defeated. The drug industry did this expertly in 2005 in California by qualifying its own, faux-drug discount measure to defeat a drug discount measure. For this June's ballot, cities and counties qualified a counter measure on eminent domain to counter a more aggressive initiative, qualified by property owners, that would restrict the ability of governments to take property for any sort of private use. (The LA Times sorts this out today).