Coping With Election ’92 : Voters face bewildering array of candidates and initiatives

In the months leading up to an election, The Times tries to be of genuine service to voters. That’s a tradition at this newspaper and at editorial pages throughout the country.

For almost two decades this newspaper has generally avoided making specific endorsements in contests for the presidency, U.S. Senate or governor, out of the conviction that its readers had more than enough information and context to make their own judgment. The Times has felt that its opinions would be more helpful in those races and--increasingly in this state--in those complex and often controversial ballot measures that invariably receive considerably less attention than the major campaigns.

NECESSARY DECISIONS: Indeed, in the Nov. 3 election the voter is confronted not only with important and sometimes difficult decisions about candidates but also with a dizzying array of proposed state constitutional amendments, state statutes and initiatives, and local ballot and bond measures that are often of absurd complexity, if not near-criminal ambiguity.

Many voters, as well as political scientists, have complained about the frightening trend toward government by ballot initiative. Hardly anyone relishes the onerous and indeed dangerous prospect of having to decide such matters as a complex revision of the state tax code (Proposition 167) or a new right-to-die law (Proposition 161) or term limits for California’s elected representatives to Congress (Proposition 164) by the misleadingly simple device of registering a slash-and-burn yes or no in the voting booth.

That prospect thoroughly annoys sincere citizens and serious students of government: Why bother to elect (not to mention pay for) an entire state Legislature if in the end the average voter has to decide such complex and important issues? Thus it is often the general impulse--and it’s one we sometimes share--to shout out a very noisy “no” on all these ballot measures in an effort to send a resounding message and discourage this continuing abuse of the initiative process.

PROCEDURAL ABUSE: The truth is that the state’s initiative process is an otherwise worthy procedural option. But it was created not for the purpose of supplanting the state Legislature but for the goal of allowing citizens to decide major issues in very special and extraordinary circumstances. Thus “initiative abuse” is very much the right term for a process that asks voters to act as legislators, and indeed governors. It isn’t fair to ask voters to arrive at reasoned judgments about, say, welfare reform (Proposition 165), when in reality that ballot measure is also a cleverly drafted device designed to enhance the governor’s budgetary powers. Or consider Proposition 167: It requires of voters that they pick their way, item by item, political land mine by land mine, through a complex tax-code revision amendment. By contrast, the legislative review process elicits the testimony of economists, accountants and legal experts before a bill is voted on. By sorry contrast, the initiative process has no such built-in safeguards--and the issues on the ballot are often illuminated by little more than the most simplistic and misleading of commercial TV advertising.

That’s sad because California is not without serious problems these days and it deserves better than this initiative process to cope with the challenge. Even so, strong as the temptation is, the impulse to reject each and every one of the dozen ballot measures must be resisted. After all, voters are going to have to decide these initiatives one way or the other.

So, in that spirit, shall we. In the coming weeks this newspaper will discuss the various statewide ballot initiatives and try to offer our best advice as to whether voters should give them their support.