I always hate the run-up to elections in California. Aside from the candidates' ads, voters here are bombarded with pleas to vote for or against various initiatives. And there are always way too many of them. Every two years, my ears are assaulted by the constant drumbeat of misleading political advertising by some corporate-backed group whose purported desire is to give me some “right,” but in reality, they just want to pick my pocket. There’s usually very little or no campaigning from groups working on behalf of the public interest.
Propositions 8 and 13 are probably our two most famous initiatives. Initiatives are merely used as either poor substitutes for resolving fiscal matters that should be left up to the state Legislature, or worse, vehicles for some special interest to fool voters into giving them some unfair favor (or take away someone else’s civil right: see Prop. 8). When initiatives were introduced in California by progressive activists early in the last century, it was meant to dilute the influence of entrenched wealthy interests - namely, the railroads - and give voters the power to pass legislation. It was a good idea at the time. Unfortunately, the initiative process has been turned on its head, and is now being abused by new entrenched wealthy interests.
Ever since the Reagan administration scrapped the Fairness Doctrine, there’s been no more free and equal political advertising, and therefore, no fair playing field when it comes to the initiative process. Unlike the rest of the country, California has been living under the tyranny of the world that is Citizens United - the Supreme Court case allowing unlimited corporate campaign funding - for a long time. Corporations here have been able to meddle in our local elections for years.
This Tuesday, June 8, California voters will decide on three particularly egregious and misleading measures: Propositions 14, 16 and 17. Proposition 14 would establish an open primary system in California elections for congressional, statewide, and legislative races. Instead of each political party choosing their candidate for the general election, primaries would be open to anyone regardless of party affiliation. The top two vote getters would advance to the general election, instead of the top vote getter from each party. The progressive radio station I listen to has been flooded with pro-14 ads, telling voters that Sacramento’s legislative system is broken and that open primaries are needed to rectify the partisan bickering that has locked the state in gridlock. In other words, Prop. 14 backers are trying to convince people that the open primary will bring more democracy into the process by giving voters more choices.
What the ads don’t tell you is that Prop. 14 was put on the ballot as part of a deal to get former State Senator (now current Republican Lt. Gov.) Abel Maldonado's vote on the 2009 state budget. The ads also don’t reveal that the open primary will pretty much wipe out third parties in the state. Without an even playing field in fundraising and media access, third parties would have no chance getting enough votes to advance to the general election. It's also possible that several Democrats or several Republicans would run in the same race, splitting a party's vote, and allowing a candidate with a small plurality to advance to the general election. It’s especially annoying that the open primary is rearing it’s ugly head again in California, a decade after our state already tried and then rejected such a system.
Proposition 16 is the Pacific Gas & Electric-backed “Taxpayers Right to Vote Act,” but it should be called “The Protect PG&E’s Monopoly Act” or “The PG&E Wants to Make it Easier to Raise Your Rates Act” or how about “The PG&E Power Grab Act.” Prop. 16 would require a two-thirds supermajority vote in any community that wanted to start its own public utility. In California, we are one of a handful of states that have a rule requiring a 2/3 majority to pass the state budget and to raise revenue. This effectively gives the Republican minority in the Legislature veto power over everything, meaning we can never get anything passed on time. (Same with the 60-vote supermajority in the U.S. Senate) So PG&E knew exactly what it was doing when it came up with this little gem of an initiative. With a 2/3 requirement, new publicly owned - cheaper and more ecologically responsive - utilities would likely never get built. All PG&E would have to do is convince 1/3 of the electorate in a community to vote against the public utility. Of course, competition threatens PG&E’s bottom line, so they’ve spent tens of millions of dollars in advertising to pass this bomb. Public agencies are prohibited by law to campaign against Prop. 16, and consumer rights groups don’t have enough in their war chest to wage a fair fight.
PG&E has bought ads in newspapers and magazines, and spent money on colorful and splashy 8x11 fliers asking voters, “if you’re tired of feeling powerless over how government spends your money.” The radio ads on commercial radio feature the red-meat phrase, “government-run electricity.” That always attracts conservative voters, who unlike liberals, tend to turn out more in off-year elections. Never mind that when the Enron-created power crisis hit California in 2001, it was the areas with so-called “government-run” utilities that suffered the least from rolling blackouts and skyrocketing rate hikes. But PG&E knows that a lot of folks just aren’t paying that much attention, which in an unfair electoral playing field, works to their advantage. The opposition against Prop. 16 has a website, but how many Californians know about it? There are several opposition efforts on Facebook, including a clever one by a guy who says that his $35 dollars spent campaigning in the social networking sphere (he’s also on Twitter) can beat PG&E’s $35 million (the company has now spent $44 million). For our sake, I hope he’s right.
Prop. 17 is particularly nasty if you’re someone who switches auto insurance frequently, someone who is returning to California after a period away, someone who decides to temporarily suspend your insurance to take public transit, or if you're a member of the armed services going away on deployment. This measure is backed by Mercury Auto Insurance, which has spent at least $10 million to get it passed. Prop. 17 would allow auto insurance companies to raise or lower their rates based on a driver’s history of continuous coverage. This measure has also gotten a lot of airplay on my local talk radio station. It seems like every other ad is for Prop. 17. The ads tell you that if you stay with your insurer for a long time, you’ll get a nice “loyalty” discount. But, what is omitted is that if you have some gap in your coverage, you’ll get hit with a higher rate. This initiative would hit the poor especially hard. Basically, Prop. 17 attempts to get around the state’s landmark Proposition 103, passed in 1988, which established California's insurance commissioner and introduced tough, new regulations - including restricting auto insurance companies' ability to base rates on anything other than your driving record. Naturally, Mercury, a company that has a less than stellar reputation, wants to get rid of that inconvenient requirement, and is willing to fool voters into doing so.
And this is, and has always been, a problem, with California’s initiative process. A group of people with enough money can spend millions to fool voters into cheating themselves. California voters may naively believe that initiatives have brought more democracy, but this experiment has only brought our state fiscal misery. Most famously, Proposition 13, passed in 1978, was touted as keeping middle-income homeowners from losing their homes to skyrocketing property taxes - a worthy goal. However, that initiative started and cemented the disastrous and irresponsible anti-tax fervor that eventually swept the country and contributed to California’s and America’s perennial budget problems. Although Prop. 13 helped a lot of homeowners, it resulted in an unfair, two-tiered society: those who bought homes before 1978 and those who bought homes afterward. Because the latter isn’t covered under Prop. 13, they are paying far more in property taxes because their taxes reflect the current market value of their homes. In addition, wealthy corporations covered under Prop. 13 are paying a pittance in taxes on property worth millions. The money they're not paying in taxes could be used to repair California’s infrastructure, which began falling apart directly after Prop. 13 was passed. Prop. 13 also introduced the 2/3 vote mandate for raising revenue, and is directly responsible for California’s fiscal problems ever since. Prop. 13 inevitably spawned a flurry of future bond measures, because since it became harder for the state to raise revenue, legislators were forced to ask voters to borrow to pay for the public services people still demanded. Taxpayers eventually have to pay back the proceeds from the bonds plus millions of dollars in interest, compounding California’s budget woes. Californians - drunk on getting something for nothing - time and again voted to borrow for more and more services, and kept deferring the pain off into the future. And now, we’re constantly on the edge of default. But a recalcitrant governor and his Republican colleagues in the Legislature still won’t let the state properly pay its bills.
I think the Progressives who instituted California’s initiative system would be appalled at how their reform got so twisted and ended up ruining the state they worked so hard to improve. The experiment in direct democracy has become a disaster. How can we fix this broken system? Make it harder to get propositions on the ballot? Then corporate special interests would just spend more money gathering more signatures. Ban paid signature gatherers, so the only ones who want to put a measure on a ballot are the ones willing to put in the time for free? No, because that might run up against Citizens United. Make signature gatherers wear huge signs telling voters who is paying them? That might be the best remedy for now, but does more disclosure really get people to pay attention? Get Congress and the Federal Communications Commission to revive that portion of the Fairness Doctrine requiring free and equal time in political advertising? That would go a long way toward challenging corporate influence in the initiative process, but with the political climate in Washington being as hostile as it is, this simple reform would be an uphill battle. I’m wondering if California should just get rid of the initiative process? I’d rather not go to that extreme. But at least until something is done to break the polluting influence of money in politics, maybe there should be a moratorium on initiatives. But to do that - sigh - would take an initiative.