It's bad enough that California law permits the attorney general -- an elected, partisan official -- to write the official titles and summaries for ballot initiatives that qualify from the ballot. Most of the time, at least, the a.g. is independent of the initiative sponsor. But when it comes to measures that are placed on the ballot by the legislature itself, lawmakers themselves get to write the official summaries. And they don't have a good record of being honest with the public.

The latest example is Prop 1A, the spending limit measure that was part of last week's budget deal and will appear on the May 19 special election ballot. As the Sacramento Bee points out in this story, the legislature's official description of the measure omits the very important fact that if the measure passes, temporary tax increases in the budget deal will last longer. (The tax provision was inserted to discourage unions and liberal groups from fighting the measure on the ballot -- a tactic that, so far, seems to be working).

California needs an independent title board that would draft titles and summaries for ballot initiatives and legislative measures -- anything that goes to the people. Such a board should be balanced between Democrats and Republicans and independents. The board's only mission would be to give voters an accurate description of the measure.

Not the 21st century, mind you. But South Dakota, where American direct democracy began in 1898, is considering whether to change its woefully outdated laws that permit initiative sponsors to write their own descriptions of what their measure would do. In the world outside South Dakota, titles and summaries have been written by public officials who are supposed to be neutral. (In California, it's the attorney general). More details of the proposal from this story in the Mitchell Republic.

Big news in the direct democracy world. Oklahoma's attorney general, who had brought a dubious prosecution of term limits advocate and two professionals -- the "Oklahoma 3" in initiative land -- for conspiracy to violate the state's law against out-of-state petition gatherers, announced today that he will drop the charges, the Associated Press reports. The decision comes after a federal appeals court struck down the law that the three were accused of violating.

The attorney general, Drew Edmondson, also declared he wouldn't appeal the court decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. That's wise. The state almost certainly would have lost. Attempts to regulate signature gathering typically run afoul of First Amendment protections of political speech. And the Oklahoma law was especially wrong-headed; it made illegal what is standard practice in American initiative politics: the gathering of signatures by traveling circulators. The real question is why Edmondson persisted for so long -- it's been more than a year -- in pursuing the charges. Conservatives saw political bias. (Edmondson's a Democrat). Liberals unwisely exulted over the prosecution, despite the threat to free speech it represented. If they have any honor, the New York Times and the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center owe Jacob and his fellow defendants an apology.

The new secretary of state and attorney general in Oregon, both Democrats, have been making it clear that they don't care much for ballot initiatives and are going to make it harder to qualify measures for the ballot. They intend to scrutinize initiative filings more closely, and are seeking to enhance penalties for fradulent signature gathering.

Phony signatures have been a part of the political process as long as signatures have been sought by initiative sponsors and candidates. A good validity rate for signatures in an initiative campaign is about 70 percent. But in Arizona this year, several measures had validity rates of 50 percent or lower. That's alarming, and suggests there was widespread fraud.

But there's reason to worry that the elected officials are thinking more about politics than the law. It's noteworthy that the attorney general-elect, John Kroger, hired an attorney who has represented the teachers' union in years of initiative battles with Bill Sizemore, an Oregon activist who, a court recently suggested, is addicted to the filing of initiatives. The state should be careful that it doesn't limit political rights. A new state law already raises the bar considerably for filing petitions, with the signature requirement merely for submitting a petition (as opposed to qualifying it for the ballot) rising from 25 to 1,000 signatures.

A Democratic law firm filed  two versions of an initiative Monday with the California attorney general. As Democratic leaders have promised, the initiative effectively would eliminate California's requirement of a two-thirds vote to pass a budget. (Though, for political purposes, the two-thirds requirement would remain in the constitution--new language would merely exempt all appropriations from the two-thirds requirement for approving appropriations. Look for advocates of the initiative to say, over and over, that it doesn't remove the two-thirds requirement from the constitution. Because technically, it doesn't).

One of the two versions of the initiative also would eliminate the two-thirds requirement for raising all taxes (with an exception for property taxes that offers a bit of a nod to Prop 13). Again, this is political. Proponents are cutting the heart out of Prop 13, but they'll be able to say, "What are you talking about? We don't touch property taxes!" It's also possible that by filing two versions, backers are telegraphing a political strategy: they could agree not to take on the two-thirds requirement as it applies to taxes -- in return for support for eliminating the two-thirds requirement on the budget.

Good politicians have the ability to appear to be on both sides of an issue, but Jerry Brown -- the former governor and presidential candidate, and the current attorney general of California -- is breaking new ground in this realm. Try to follow this: Brown, a likely candidate for governor in 2010, is supportive of same-sex marriage politically. But before the state supreme court, he's defending Prop 8, the just-approved initiative to ban same-sex marriage in California. At the same time, he's defending the marriages of approximately 18,000 gay couples who took the plunge in the past five months, while such unions were legal.

The East Valley Tribune reports that the Arizona attorney general's office has launched a criminal investigation of the signature gathering efforts of several initiatives there. So many signatures proved to be invalid that several measures failed to qualify for the ballot. The Tribune story says that investigators are examining whether fraud was the reason for all the invalid signatures.

Ohio has one of the tighest deadlines for collecting signatures on an initiative or referendum petition -- 90 days. But there's a problem. Each measure requires the attorney general to issue a summary. But there's no legal requirement on the attorney general to produce such summaries in a timely manner. An AG could delay and delay -- running out the 90-day clock for collecting signatures. In an editorial, The Cleveland Plain-Dealer says this is wrong.