Initiative

Measure 47, the November ballot initiative to make Colorado a "right to work" state, has so many opponents (labor and business leaders are both opposing it after a recent deal) that it's become something of a political orphan. The Rocky Mountains News, unable to get a clear answer about how the initiative came to be, has turned up legal documents showing its origins.

Back in the spring, I ran into a consultant working for redistricting reform, the California ballot initiative Prop 11, and he predicted that there might not be a funded campaign against the measure. I scoffed -- I think redistricting reform, while a fine cause, has been oversold and is politically a waste of time. But it looks more and more like he was onto something.

Redistricting measures have a long tradition of failing. But if there's ever going to be a year for such an initiative to pass, this may be it. The latest good news for Prop 11 is that the powerful California Teachers Assn., which has spent big to beat previous redistricting efforts, has decided to stay neutral. (CTA isn't happy with the legislature over the most recent budget, and this smells like payback to Democratic leaders who oppose redistricting). That leaves the no campaign without critical financial and organizational strength.

That said, it's still an uphill battle for redistricting, which has less than 40 percent support in polls. Few initiatives with such little support end up winning. But the ray of hope in those surveys is that the "no" vote is low, too, with a huge undecided. If redistricting supporters can somehow get out their message (a tough thing to do with attention on the worldwide economic crisis and the presidential campaign), they might have a chance at winning over undecided and earning a narrow victory.

The new "Yes on 8" ad is blanketing the air waves. Now supporters of the California initiative to ban same-sex marriage are touting the results of a new SurveyUSA poll that shows the measure with a lead of 47 to 42 percent. Such surveys are controversial--Survey USA is a "robo poll" that uses only an electronic voice. But both sides seem to be taking it seriously.

Here's an account of the poll via Baptist Press. Meanwhile, on the left, the Courage Campaign sends out an alert that reads: A new poll just released by KPIX, San Francisco's CBS television affiliate, reveals a shocking shift in support for Proposition 8. According to the poll, likely California voters now favor passage of Prop 8 by a five-point margin, 47 percent to 42 percent, following a recent blitz of advertising by supporters of the initiative. Meanwhile, an internal poll just released by the "No on 8" campaign confirms the KPIX poll numbers, showing Prop 8 winning 47%-43%.      

That's the motto of the In-House Drafting Committee, one of the most interesting government offices I've come across. The committee handles the official translation of all legislation -- including initiatives and referenda -- in Switzerland. It's a crucial role in a country with three major national languages -- German, French and Italian. They do not have a light hand--they do serious editing for clarity and for constitutionality. The office has an interesting collection of people: historians, political scientists, linguists and two-- count 'em, two -- theologians. (They're considered particularly good on questions of ethics, morality and the original meaning of texts).

It's an article of faith that Switzerland's diversity, particularly in language, is both a challenge and an advantage for the country's democracy. "Ideas tend to be expressed more clearly when they have to be translated," one staffer explained to me. I asked if there is often resistance to the changes they suggest in ballot initiatives filed by citizens. The answer: no. The committee essentially provides legislative drafting to initiative sponsors. The initiative writers can reject the suggestions of the drafting committee, but they rarely do. The committee eliminates ambiguity, make initiatives shorter, and make the terms so clear that their meaning will be clear in three languages. That's what it means to think like a philosopher and write like a farmer.

A group representing tip-earning casino workers in Nevada earlier this year filed a statewide initiative to bar casinos from forcing them to pool their tips and share them with supervisors. Then they got a lesson in direct democracy. Their initiative, and 11 others, were challenged by opponents and successfully knocked off the ballot.

Now the union-backed group, PEST (Committee to Prevent Employees From Seizing Tips") has gone to court, filing a lawsuit that claims the state's rules on ballot initiatives are unconstitutional. If this suit gets any traction, it will be worth watching because casino workers are challenging everything -- the single subject rule, the requirements for title and summary, and the ability of opposition groups to challenge a measure before signatures are filed.

In drafting ballot initiatives, sponsors often face a choice. They can give their measure a better chance of winning by making it vague. A specific provision is easier to attack. But vague provisions often provoke legal challenges that block successful initiatives from taking effect. Such may be the case with Arizona's Prop 101, the ballot initiative designed to prevent the sort of health care reforms passed in Massachusetts and pursued in California. (Speciifically, the initiative bans the state from requiring people to get health care coverage, and would seem to bar a single-payer system). In this Arizona Republic story on the measure, critics suggest the initiative is so ambiguous that its real meaning might be decided in the courts.

And now the head of the state's indigent care system suggests the initiative, if passed, would force his department to close.

Both houses of the legislature passed the budget compromise, giving official sanction to a document full of billions in hidden borrowing and non-existent revenues. The document's budget reforms are also phony, an expansion of a current rainy day fund that has no real protections.  I'm told reliably that the governor's top advisors want him to veto it. He should, if only to preserve some credibility on budget issues. It appears likely that the legislature would override his veto. Any lawmaker who votes for this should worry about being struck by bolts of lightning if he or she ever uses the words "fiscally responsible" again.

The initiative had enough signatures to qualify. It would have forced city pension funds to divest from corporations that assist the American military presence in Iraq or that provide direct material support to the Israeli government within the occupied territories.

But a judge ruled that the initiative was invalid because city voters do not have the right to make investment choices for city pension fund. Only the board overseeing the funds can do that.

I'm going to need remedial math work. A correction to my post on basics: I was right about the required number of signatures being 12 percent of the number of votes cast in most recent election. But when I made a mathematical error in calculating that. The correct standard is 1,041,530 signatures, according to the Secretary of State's office. That's still very doable, and likely to be not that much more costly than a ballot initiative. One note: proponents of a recall will want to get at least 1.5 million signatures so they have a cushion. Typically, about 30 percent of signatures are found to be invalid for one reason or another. But with no other measures on the ballot, the recall should be able to qualify for less than $2 per signature -- so the total cost of qualification ought to be less than $3 million.

For more on recall procedures, the secretary of state's handbook is here.

In a quick morning canvas of signature gatherers and local coordinators in California, none of the half-dozen people I checked with around the state has been hired to do the Arnold recall as yet. This is the slow season for the signature gathering game. Many of California's gatherers are working on local initiative or referendum petitions -- there's a significant one in Stockton, and several in Southern California -- or are out of state. The good news for supporters of recalling Arnold is that it wouldn't be hard to hire signature gatherers fast, and with little else on the street, the price wouldn't be particularly high.