The California initiative ballot has too much gobbledygook. Voters aren’t professors | Opinion

Drop box ballots at the await first scanning and sorting at the Stanislaus County Registrars of Voters office in Modesto, Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024. Californians have to decide on 10 statewide initiatives.

All these propositions on the California ballot this election beg the question as to whether the state has reached an overdose of democracy.

Every-day voters are being asked their opinions, for example, on the expenditures of the Managed Care Organization Provider tax. The future of the Costa-Hawkins Act. A 100-page piece of legislation (a bond) that I even doubt most legislators even read. And that’s just the beginning.

I did my civic duty. I have voted. And as an opinion writer, I was literally paid to study these measures and interview their friends and foes. But a voter shouldn’t need essentially a doctorate degree in public policy to be able to understand a ballot. This one, for whatever the reasons, has been the most annoying thicket in memory.

Opinion

Straightforward initiatives

Granted, there are some straightforward measures that are right in the wheelhouse of Californians to judge based on their values.

Proposition 2 is that periodic request to fund the state’s share of school construction and reconstruction.

Proposition 3 protects gay marriage.

Proposition 6 proposes to erase from the state Constitution the requirement of involuntary servitude during imprisonment.

Proposition 32 would adjust upward the minimum wage.

But these represent a minority of the 10 statewide initiatives on this ballot. After these, things begin to get complicated.

Murky measures

Sentencing reform is never a proverbial walk in the park. Proposition 36 is the one that provides stiffer sentences for repeat petty thieves and drug users. The measure vows to offer drug treatment as an alternative to repeat users, never mind that nearly 40% of California counties have no such treatment programs. It can increase punishment for a third petty theft (pilfering of less than $950), but leaves some decisions entirely up to prosecutors.

Proposition 5, which would lower the approval threshold to 55% for many local bond proposals, is a reminder of the randomness of the use of numbers in setting policy. Presently, the passage threshold is 66.66%. Why 55%? Why not 54%? Ultimately elections are all about numbers. There’s just something that is inevitably arbitrary about what numeric targets we set.

Proposition 4, a bond to provide $10 billion for water, parks, forests, farm sustainability, offshore wind, resource conservancies, flooding and the unsightly Los Angeles River, would assuredly go down to failure if voters were required to read the 100-some pages of legislative handiwork by Sacramento’s Democratic majority. That it says it’s about “safe drinking water” in the title likely means it will pass, with many voters not reading beyond that.

Tall weeds

Propositions 33 and 34 deserve front row seats in Election Hell, if there were such a thing.

Prop. 33, based on the ballot text, repeals Section 1954.50 of the California Civil Code, also known as the Costa-Hawkins Act. This would allow all kinds of new rent control measures at the local level. Granted, this code has to be eliminated in order to do so. Backed by the Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Prop. 33 represents the third attempt to advance rent control by the initiative process in six years.

Prop. 34 is an attempt to prevent the same AIDS foundation from using its revenues to advance rent control in California ever again. It just doesn’t say so explicitly. Instead, it asks voters to reform the federal 340B Drug Pricing Program, the source of the revenues in question. Asking voters to become health reform experts is always dangerous territory. Undoubtedly the opponents of more rent control at the California Apartment Association (the backers of Prop. 34) are tired of the initiative process and this AIDS group. That just doubles the irony of how these two political gladiators battle one another.

Proposition 35 is another jump into health care financing. This time the issue is an existing tax on managed care plans that helps to run the Medi-Cal program, which provides health care for about 40% of state residents. Prop. 35 asks voters to divvy up the proceeds of this managed care tax among the Medi-Cal family of providers. Voters have to settle how this funding source is permanently spent because legislators likely never will. Basically, you’re being asked to do Sacramento’s job.

Most important: Vote!

Just because an initiative is straightforward does not mean it should pass. One that is Greek to the average voter should not automatically fail, either. That is why I found this ballot so difficult.

I should be glad I wasn’t alive in 1914, when a record 48 initiatives appeared on a California ballot. For as much as we complain about initiatives these days, this ballot by comparison is downright anorexic.

For some help, The Bee has a voter guide. It combines neutral explanations along with some voting advice. Give it a read.

And above all else, please vote. And good luck.