Election News Roundup: 5/15/09-5/26/09 - Prop 8 Special Edition

SAVE AS FAVORITE

VIEW FAVORITES

By Ross Levin (about the author) Page 1 of 4 page(s)

opednews.com Permalink

For OpEdNews: Ross Levin - Writer

Election reform is one of the most important issues facing our country and our world right now, even if it doesn't get the coverage of torture or abortion. The way that we run our elections and initiative processes determines who makes policy, the type of policy made, and the tone of our political discourse. If we ignore it or take advantage of the electoral system, we our doing ourselves and our republic a disservice.

This week: The results to last week's poll, a lawsuit to ban electronic voting, "The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny," online voting in Honolulu, the Progressive Party makes progress, photo ID laws, Sotomayor's election law history, the disappearance of secretaries of state, and more.

But first, I want to say something about Prop 8 and the recent court ruling. It is outrageous that gay people in California now do not have equal rights, but the court ruling was more on how the initiative process works, and how Prop 8 fits into the state constitution than it was about gay rights. There has been a lot of oversimplification of the issues of the court ruling and the initiative process, so I'd like to dispel some of that (as much as an amateur election reform activist can...). Please follow me below the fold.

First, there is the court ruling. Adam B of Daily Kos has a good analysis of it here and Rick Hasen has a good one here. Seneca Doane of Daily Kos wrote about the narrow scope of this decision. I don't think much of it is objectionable legally, because the justices were upholding their states laws, if I understand correctly. However, I'm not sure how I feel about the state supreme court ruling that an initiative can legally abridge peoples' rights (for my source, read the link to Rick Hasen's analysis).

That brings me to my next subject - the initiative process and the laws of California. Both need to be changed. First, the state law. I believe that if there are rights in the California state constitution's Declaration of Rights that are declared "inalienable," the should truly be inalienable. Apparently, the state supreme court disagrees, but that is honestly beyond my understanding.

More importantly, I believe that the initiative process needs some serious reform in California and nationwide. I have recently had two diaries about initiative reform in California - the one about Prop 8 from yesterday (that you can still rec until about 9 PM!) is here and the one about Bill Maher and improving the initiative process is here. What they say holds true:

Ballot initiatives...are a great tool in government. They really do give the people a voice - and what that actually means is that citizens can address a problem if the legislature doesn't. For example, in 2008 the penalties for carrying marijuana were lessened in both Michigan and Massachusetts by ballot initiative. And it's not like Michigan is some kind of liberal haven.

From what I've seen, the problem in California (and most other places with ballot initiatives) is that the implementation of the process is not as good as it should be. It's just like representative government. Congress has given us or allowed such things as the war in Iraq, torture, the Patriot Act, the Vietnam War, segregation, slavery, and a genocide against natives, amongst other things. But with representative government we know not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We know that what is needed is reform.

If you don't understand what I am saying, consider this - Prop 8 was a constitutional amendment. It passed with only about 52.3 percent of the vote. Voter turnout for the initiative was about 79.4 percent. Since 52.3 percent of 79.4 percent is about 41.5 percent, that means that only 41.5 percent of California voters approved this amendment to their state constitution.

Let me say that again - 8.5 percentage points less than a majority of registered voters passed Prop 8, a constitutional amendmnet.

In those diaries I went on to call for significant reforms of the initiative process, and that is exactly what I still think is needed. For a good model, look at the proposed National Initiative for Democracy (aka NI4D), an effort to get a very reformed ballot initiative process on the national level:

NI4D is modeled on direct initiative as practiced in many states, but also introduces three key reforms: (a) NI4D outlaws corporate contributions to campaigns for or against an initiative, reversing the Supreme Court decision in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978). (b) In existing direct initiative procedures, initiative language is finalized prior to signature collection. There is no informed deliberation, no consensus-building, and no compromise. To address this procedural weakness, NI4D incorporates a public hearing and deliberative committee (a.k.a. citizen jury). The committee has the power to rewrite the initiative, incorporating feedback from all stakeholders. (c) NI4D includes an option to qualify initiative proposals by polling. In large jurisdictions, polling is less expensive and more accurate than signature collection.

For the specific case of California, I would also advocate for something along these lines:

1. Do something about paid signature gatherers and per-signature paychecks, who are often paid by huge organizations to collect signatures, and sometimes make the initiative process less voter-oriented. I'm not sure that banning them outright is the solution, because there are a lot of legitimate signature gatherers out there. I think a better solution would be to expand the amount of time Californians have to collect signatures. It is currently only 150 days to collect about 700,000 signatures for a constitutional amendment and 430,000 for a law. Only some kind of huge organization can manage that, and it kind of takes some of the power away from the voters.

2. As I advocated in my Prop 8 diary, there should be stricter rules for how to amend the state constitution. Currently, the only difference between amending the constitution and changing a normal law is a few hundred thousand signatures. There are many different options about how to do this, including two separate elections (like they do in Nevada) or requiring a majority of registered voters rather than a majority of voters who turnout or some other method.

3. Make the initiative process more accessible to everyday citizens. If a law were easier to qualify for the ballot than it currently is (it needs over 430,000 valid signatures collected in 150 days), citizens might be more directly involved in the process, and there would be less monied interests, like the Mormon church, controlling the initiative process. This goes hand-in-hand with citizen deliberative committees and expanding the initiative process to other states and nationwide.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Ross Levin a young activist who also writes for keystonepolitics.com, operationitch.com, independentpoliticalreport.com. He first became active in politics in the 2008 presidential campaign through Mike Gravel's quixotic run for the Democratic (more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.