In 1911, California’s government was almost completely controlled by the Southern Pacific Railroad. Through bribery, this railroad company maintained a firm grip on the legislature. And then (at last!), the Progressive Movement swept the nation. The state amended its constitution to allow voters to decide directly on legislation and constitutional amendments. Political power had been restored to “the people”, and the Progressives of the early twentieth century went on their merry way.
Fast forward a century to the 2022 midterm election in California, and voters are deciding on procedures for dialysis clinics and sports betting in casinos. Every election cycle, we trust ourselves and our neighbors to make informed decisions on issues ranging from constitutional wording to private healthcare policies.
At the risk of sounding esoteric, the United States is a representative democracy, not a direct democracy. We elect people who (supposedly) specialize in policymaking to make these decisions for us. Founding Father James Madison warned us that direct democracy (such as ballot propositions) would leave the political system susceptible to the unpredictable and illogical “passions” of the people. That is now a real danger that Californians face each election year.
A perfect illustration of this danger is Proposition 13, a California ballot initiative passed in 1978 to severely restrict the state’s ability to increase property taxes. Frustrated voters with comically high property taxes unified under the slogan “I’m mad as hell!”—a refrain taken from the popular 1975 film Network. They seemed to not understand, or ignore, that by reducing property taxes, a major source of funding for public education would be taken away. As a consequence, despite having the highest GDP in the US, California consistently ranks below average in quality of public K-12 education.
I talked to Ted Lempert, a Political Science lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley. Lempert, who teaches the class “California Politics”, is also a former two-term member of the California State Assembly. When I asked Lempert about Prop 13, he agreed that it had “a huge impact.” Despite its passage fifty years ago, Lempert pointed out that Prop 13 “ still dominates California politics” in terms of how we fund schools, forcing California to rely more heavily on income and sales taxes.
To be clear, I am not advocating for ballot propositions to be abolished in California. Their empowering effect in the early twentieth century hasn’t gone away, with ballot propositions giving voters greater control over the legislative fates of important issues. After the overturning of Roe v. Wade, many states added reproductive rights to their constitutions through ballot measures. Similarly, Lempert noted how the initiative process allows voters to pass policies that might not make it through the legislature. He has seen initiatives for child issues with broad public support being passed, despite pushback from interest groups in the capitol.
However, the initiative process has significant problems. For one, voters are often forced to decide on policies that are incredibly convoluted, with consequences nearly impossible to understand. Take Voter Information Guides as an example. These guides are often well over a hundred pages long and cost the state millions of dollars to print. In 2017 alone, the seventeen propositions produced a record-breaking 224 page voter guide, costing the state $15 million. Proposal summaries are written in purposefully misleading language to sway voters to support policies that might not even be in their best interest.
The initiative process has also now become a tool for special interests, leading to what some have called the “Initiative-Industrial Complex”. Lempert bemoaned this twisting of direct democracy:
“The original intent was to make sure that the voters could speak out and…rally against special interests that dominated the capital. And now, too often, the initiative process is like a special interest free for all,” Lempert said.
Anyone with enough money and a public policy dream can pay the proposal fee, hire professionals to write their ballot measure, and acquire petition signatures. This makes the initiative process especially susceptible to the interests of the most wealthy and powerful citizens and corporations, while excluding the ordinary citizens that the process was originally designed for.
Another common reproach of the initiative process is that it leaves legislators with “tied hands”. When I asked Lempert if he had felt that way during his time in the legislature, he answered quickly: “Yeah, a hundred percent”. He did, however, qualify that agreement; legislators’ hands are usually tied only for expenditures, such as Prop 13, where they are prohibited from choosing how to fund the state’s programs.
If anything is clear (because ballot propositions certainly aren’t), the initiative process needs reforming. One major change could be limiting spending. Preventing interest groups from dominating which initiatives get attention would allow the process to return to its original purpose: giving power to the people. Unfortunately, Lempert explained that this change is subject to a ruling by the Supreme Court, who have previously protected these types of political donations under the right to freedom of expression.
Another reform could be allowing the legislature to change initiatives once the voters have passed them. Currently, Ballot propositions can only be changed by the voters approving another proposition to amend the original one. With this reform, the legislature could amend any proposition at any time, ensuring that our state’s policies best reflect the changing times. Just as the legislature can change any previous law passed, ballot initiatives would be similarly constrained by the legislature’s approval.
Still, ballot propositions remain popular among California’s electorate. Any politician seeking to reverse the people’s initiative power, even through a smaller reform, would surely have a short political career. There are surely reasons ballot propositions can be a positive force in California politics, yet the process is in dire need of reform. Clearly, we do not want the California politics of the early twentieth century, but perhaps we have become too complacent. Is our current system really the best alternative?
Featured Image Source: Rahul Lal for CalMatters
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