It's time to do election homework.
Colorado has this neat practice. Every election, we spend a ton of taxpayer money to compile, print, and mail to every voter, a little booklet of information describing the various ballot issues. It's the "Colorado Blue Book."
This Ballot Measures for Dummies® is necessary because Colorado's petition process for getting a measure on the ballot is relatively easy. Every special interest group in the State tries to get their concerns addressed by Constitutional Amendment, which explains why our Constitution is such a hacked up mess of populism.
Most of us accept this as a more or less annoying game that plays out every election season. We value the Initiative Process, so we put up with all the bullshit amendments that it produces, and we pay for the convenience of having the "nonpartisan research staff" explain the bullshit just in case we miss it.
This is nontrivial. There are 14 proposed Constitutional Amendments on the ballot in November.
That's a lot of homework. . . .
Here's how the game works. The special interest groups can't get Bills pushed through the Legislature, so they turn to the voters. They work very hard to craft their Amendments in ways that obscure their controversial, minority-opinion agendas. The language is often intentionally ambiguous, designed to accommodate both an interpretation that is acceptable to voters and another interpretation that supports a different meaning, whether in kind or degree.
Take Amendment 46 (pdf) for example (use the pdf bookmarks). Amendment 46 is the Anti-Affirmative Action and Anti-Gay Rights Amendment. They certainly don't call it that. It's styled as an anti-discrimination measure. It's all about prohibiting discrimination and "preferential treatment."
Reading is fundamental. They are sneaky bastards.
OK, so, the "nonpartisan research staff" is charged with describing the effect of the Amendment, and the arguments for and against it, while maintaining objective neutrality. They do a pretty good job, but it sometimes requires contortions.
Amendment 47 prohibits a closed union shop. Obviously, someone thought that the phrase "closed union shop" was prejudicial because it is conspicuously absent from the description and analysis of the Amendment. Instead, the nonpartisan research staff explains that,
[Amendment 47] eliminates the possibility that any employee can be required to pay for the cost of collective bargaining or join a union as a condition of employment.
To a lot of voters, that sounds very reasonable. We like the idea of a "right to work." Yes, you can join a union if you want to, but you don't have to, nobody can force you to. Thankfully, the nonpartisan research staff gives us another hint,
At this point, membership and payment of dues is voluntary. Once a union is in place, private-sector employees in Colorado may vote to include, as part of the collective bargaining process, a requirement that all employees, including those who choose not to join the union, pay their share of the cost of collective bargaining as a condition of employment.
In other words, Colorado employees can currently bargain with management for a closed union shop. The Amendment would make that an unconstitutional agreement. It's union busting, pure and simple.
Reading the Blue Book is often funny, but every once in awhile, we find truly sublime ridiculousness. Amendment 48 is garnering some attention - even nationwide - as a wingnut attempt to define a fetus as a "person" in order to argue that abortion is a violation of that "person's" constitutionally protected due process rights. Amendment 48 states,
. . . the terms "person" or "persons" shall include any human being from the moment of fertilization.
This is the third Amendment I've looked at, I'm getting better at translating the ballot-speech, and it eventually dawns on me . . . . Lost in the noise over the abortion issue is the fact that the plain meaning of this Amendment is to define "person" to include pregnant women (well, pregnant humans actually, but that's kind of self-referential). How ironic is that? The anti-abortion crowd is pushing an Amendment, a fair reading of which is to explicitly recognize that pregnant women have constitutionally protected due process rights. Hah! Try and take away my right to choose then, suckers!
RIF. They are sneaky bastards. Be careful out there.
Big props to Colorado taxpayers for funding the Blue Book. The game would be no fun without it. No fun at all.