Editorial: Citizen’s United was an overreach. But don’t clog California’s ballot with an impotent attempt to undo it

On Thursday the California Assembly is expected to vote on whether to place a question on the November ballot targeting the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. That’s the controversial 2010 ruling in which the court held that the 1st Amendment allows corporations to spend unlimited amounts on independent election-related expenditures

Lawmakers should vote no, not because Citizens United was a good ruling — it was an overreach that exacerbated the influence of special-interest spending — but because the proposed referendum would be an empty exercise.

Unlike other ballot questions in California, this question would be purely advisory. Voters would be asked whether the state’s elected officials should use their constitutional authority, including the authority to propose or ratify amendments to the U.S. Constitution, to overturn Citizens United.

Yet, while the legislation describes the ballot question as “a voter instruction,” legislators and members of Congress from California would be free to disregard it, just as they are free to disregard other suggestions that they support a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.

The state Supreme Court has given the Legislature the green light to place such advisory referendums, but that doesn’t make it a good idea. California voters in November will have a hard enough time sorting through a bewildering array of complex and weighty ballot measures that could actually affect policy. It makes no sense to complicate their task by cluttering up the ballot with measures that may make Democrats feel good but won’t have any effect.

When he allowed earlier legislation for an anti-Citizens United referendum to go into effect without his signature, Gov. Brown complained that “we should not make it a habit to clutter our ballots with nonbinding measures, as citizens rightfully assume that their votes are meant to have legal effect.” He was right.

Members of the Assembly should ponder Brown’s warning and reject the idea of treating elections as a glorified Gallup Poll.

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