CALIFORNIA JOURNAL : 1990 Ballot Pamphlet--It Takes a College Degree

Welcome, college sophomores, to the 1990 state ballot pamphlet and supplement. Thanks to strategically placed ink dots and patches of white space, experts say you can now understand more of the 224-page official voting guide.

As for the rest of the three-quarter-pound tome? Stay in school. You still need a college degree or perhaps a few semesters of graduate school to read much more than the ballot arguments.

“What makes it all so startling, is . . . major newspapers are written at the eighth-grade level,” said Philip Dubois, a political scientist at UC Davis. “What the average citizen is being given day in and day out is at the eighth-grade level, but when it comes to Election Day, we feed them all of this stuff at 12th and 13th grade and above.”

Thanks to a suggestion by the California Commission on Campaign Finance, the title and summaries on each of the 28 propositions in this election’s two-part pamphlet have been simplified for the first time. By rearranging sentences and paragraphs into lists, the new format reduces the complexity level of the information by one school grade, from three years of college to two, according to Robert Stern, the commission’s co-director.

The average adult Californian, state statistics show, has gone to school for 12.6 years--or roughly one semester beyond high school.

“Without changing a word, it made it easier to follow,” said Stern. “The problem with the ballot pamphlet is that it is intimidating when you get it. Just the heft of it makes it difficult for voters.”

Unfortunately, the simplified descriptions make up just a fraction of the pamphlet and supplement, which were mailed last month to 9.5 million households at a cost of $11 million.

Of the 16 pages and 39,000 words devoted in the main pamphlet to Proposition 128--the most voluminous of the ballot measures--just half a page was used for the newly simplified title and summaries. The far more detailed and complex legislative analyst’s discussion, by contrast, consumed 3 1/2 pages, and the actual text of the environmental initiative--known by its proponents as “Big Green”--an additional 10.

“I don’t see how anybody is going to get through it,” said Bruce Cain, associate director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley. “People don’t read these things until right before the election, and then they are confronted with something the size of a small telephone book. People ask: Why doesn’t somebody write a thoughtful dispassionate analysis that they can understand?”

Secretary of State March Fong Eu, aware of the problems, got permission from the Legislature this year to alter the format of the titles and summaries and to move the detailed text of the propositions--generally regarded as the most tedious portion of the pamphlet--to the rear. Both changes have been popular with the public, according to Eu spokeswoman Melissa Warren.

Eu has also taken the unusual step of placing a voter survey in the pamphlet that was developed by Dubois and others at UC Davis. The 22-question survey is intended to gauge voter interest in the pamphlet and come up with ways to make it easier to read and understand. About 10,000 surveys had been returned by voters as of last week, including many with lengthy handwritten suggestions.

“There is quite a bit of pent-up frustration,” Dubois said. “The amount of information, which is reflective of the amount of initiatives, has pushed voters to the limit in many cases.”

Various studies and polls have shown that well-intentioned voters become discouraged by a pamphlet that they perceive as unapproachable. Stern’s group and others have recommended using color, graphs, photographs and charts to make the guide more interesting and understandable. The secretary of state’s office also is considering including small summary boxes with each proposition that would explain the consequences of a “yes” and a “no” vote.

“There is a void of usable information for many ballot measures, which leads to a form of electoral roulette, where voters make snap judgments based on very little information,” said David Magleby, a political scientist at Brigham Young University who has studied California ballot measures.

Skeptics say none of the changes would do much to improve voter understanding of ballot propositions because few people read the pamphlets and the measures are too complicated. Surveys have shown that between 13% and 33% of voters bother to look at the pamphlet before voting, with most voters turning instead to television advertising, direct mail and newspapers.

A recent California Poll found that almost four people in five think the propositions have become too complex to be understood by most voters. The same poll found that most voters expect to spend less than two hours reading the pamphlet before Tuesday’s election.

Eugene Lee, a political scientist who serves on a state panel that reviews the wording of ballot pamphlet analyses, said simplifications such as “yes” and “no” boxes would be impossible to write because the consequences of many propositions are not known until after an election.

“We tried to make the language as clear as possible, as sensible as possible, but when you are faced with extraordinarily complicated measures, you cannot reduce them to simple 30-second television spots and still fulfill your job under the law,” Lee said.

The solution, some say, may lie beyond the written word. Several groups have suggested creating a videocassette version of the pamphlet that voters could borrow from libraries and retail stores and watch in the comfort of their homes.

In a move in that direction, Eu for the first time has offered voters audiocassettes of the pamphlet and supplement, which previously were available only to the visually impaired. The cassettes, totaling more than 9 1/2 hours, have been so popular with commuters that Eu announced recently that she cannot keep up with the demand.

Many experts say the real problem with the ballot pamphlet is not the pamphlet--be it written, audio or video--but rather a political climate that has fostered so many ballot propositions and a lack of interest in elections among voters.

“The United States generally, and California particularly, appear destined to set more records for no-shows at the ballot box,” Eu said recently. “At a time when people around the world are opting in for democracy, the champions of democracy are opting out.”