Liberals, mark your ballots!

How do I, a card-carrying liberal — if only liberals had it sufficiently together to issue cards — think my way through this year’s crop of California ballot measures? Thusly:

Of the measures on November’s ballot, three are genuine game-changers. Proposition 25 would reduce from two-thirds to a simple majority the number of votes required in each house of the Legislature to pass a budget. Proposition 26 would raise the threshold to enact regulatory and user fees from a majority vote to two-thirds. Proposition 23 would suspend a state law — the one requiring major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions — until pigs fly. (Well, actually, until unemployment in California drops to 5.5% for a full year, but that’s a level that has been achieved for only three brief periods since 1970.)

Proposition 25 would strip from a legislative minority the ability to thwart majority rule in the Legislature by holding up passage of a state budget unless it can muster a two-thirds vote. California is the only state that requires a two-thirds vote to both pass a budget and to raise taxes. Proposition 25 won’t affect the two-thirds requirement for taxes, alas, but it would at least reestablish for the budgetary vote the single most fundamental principle of democratic government: majority rule. The current two-thirds threshold undermines the democratic axiom that elections have, and should have, consequences, by making it all but impossible for elected officials to exercise their will. A vote for Proposition 25 is a vote for a functioning democracy.

The same democratic-majoritarian logic that dictates a yes vote on 25 dictates a no vote on 26, which would raise to two-thirds the number of votes required to enact regulatory fees on, for instance, businesses that make products with contaminants, or user fees for such things as camping in state parks. There’s a broader point underlying the opposition to Proposition 26: In economic hard times, the likes of which we’ll be enduring for a while, governments are compelled both to cut programs and raise taxes or fees. If we make it harder to raise taxes or fees than to cut programs — precisely what 26 would do (and precisely what the existing two-thirds requirement for raising taxes already does) — that creates a process in which the wealthy will be even more the beneficiaries and the poor will be even more the victims of public policy.

Proposition 23 would suspend California’s global warming law for the foreseeable future, and thus eliminate the need for the state’s biggest oil refineries to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they spew into the skies. It is also the clearest example of how moneyed interests seek to use the initiative process to benefit themselves. In this case, those interests are Valero Energy Corp. and Tesoro Corp., Texas-based firms whose California refineries are among the state’s largest polluters. These companies’ owners, it’s worth noting, do not live or breathe in California.

The truly interesting thing about Proposition 23 is how it pits the old-style economy of the Texas oil business against the chic clean-energy economy beloved of Silicon Valley capitalists. What the Texas troglodytes failed to appreciate was just how much money California’s venture capitalists have sunk into clean-energy technology in California and Californians’ determination to defeat a measure that would depress the market for such technology for decades to come. California’s venture capitalists aren’t always seeking to promote the greatest good for the greatest number of their fellow Californians, but in this instance, their stance against Proposition 23 would help both the state’s labor force and the planet.

That brings us to two ballot measures that probably aren’t as important as they appear. Propositions 20 and 27 address the decennial conundrum of redistricting. Proposition 20 strips from the Legislature the power to reapportion congressional districts and entrusts that task to a quasi-bipartisan redistricting commission, a process that state voters have already approved when it comes to carving up state legislative districts. Proposition 27 would abolish that redistricting commission, however, and throw the task of all redistricting back at the Legislature.

At first glance, the idea of non-legislative, sort-of nonpartisan redistricting has a lot of appeal. Its proponents argue that it eliminates gerrymandered districts that protect incumbents, creates more competitive elections — that sort of thing. The problem with this is that Californians have already sorted themselves residentially by ideology. No matter who draws the districts in coastal California, except for Orange and San Diego counties, those districts will elect Democrats because that’s who lives in coastal California, and liberals will dominate the primaries because liberals are the most active elements in the state’s Democratic Party. In most of inland California, the reverse is true. Republicans will dominate because that’s where they live, and right-wingers will prevail in the primaries because the California Republican Party is dominated by right-wingers.

That said, I prefer that the Legislature draw the districts because the ostensibly nonpartisan redistricting commission doesn’t really reflect California. It contains five Democrats, five Republicans and four independents. But California isn’t a state in which the two parties are at parity. As of ?Sept. 3, the official count showed that 44.3% of the state’s registered voters were Democrats, 30.9% were Republicans, 4.6% belonged to other parties and 20.2% declined to state.

A commission with that makeup would reflect the state, although that makeup would have to be subject to constant small changes. If we want a body that fairly reflects the state’s political balance and is updated to reflect those changes on a regular basis, we already have one: the Legislature. For all its flaws, it’s the most representative body that can reapportion the state. Which is why I favor a no vote on 20 and a yes vote on 27.

That leaves:

Proposition 21, which establishes an $18 annual vehicle license fee to maintain state parks. On this, my theory — I’m against ballot-measure budgeting — runs up against my practice, which favors the upkeep of parks. I’m going with my practice on this one.

Proposition 24, which repeals a billion-dollar tax break — chiefly for multistate corporations — that Republicans insisted on as their price for breaking the budget stalemate of 2008. With spending on schools and other public services routinely slashed, a yes vote would restore some badly needed funds.

Proposition 19, which would legalize marijuana in California, the penalty for possession having already been reduced to the level of a traffic violation. The question, as I see it, is whether, when young people inhale, it’s more character-building for them to be within legal boundaries or violating a somewhat arbitrary law. A close call; the principled liberal could go either way.

Proposition 22, which asks voters to prohibit the perennially strapped state government from taking funds from perennially strapped local governments, wins the “why are you asking us to disentangle California’s governmental mess” prize. On this one, write nasty marginal notations on your ballot.

Harold Meyerson is editor at large of the American Prospect and a columnist for the Washington Post.