I'm in the Bay Area today, about to disappear into the archives at the Bancroft Library, so will be cut off from electronic communication for most of the day hours. But before I go, I wanted to take note briefly of a very detailed and thoughtful proposal for reforming the initiative and referendum process in California.

The proposal, contained in an initiative filed this week by one Aaron Starr (that's the name of a Liberatarian Party official in California, but I have yet to confirm that this is the same Aaron Starr), would make several very smart changes to make it less expensive to qualify initiatives and referenda for the ballot. The most intriguing involve giving more of a role to the legislature in the process (a noble goal, though I have some concerns about the method the initiative proposes) and making it far easier to collect signatures via the Internet (in part by eliminating the requirement that the entire text of an initiative appear on official petitions). One problem this initiative may have is finding petition circulators to circulate it, since it could undermine their business model.

You can download a PDF of the full initiative here at the Attorney General's web site. (It's initiative # 09-0038).

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.

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)