On Taking (Back) the Initiative

It is the poor dog with fleas, begging to be petted. It is the clink of the beggar’s cup, meant to give rise to guilt in those who would ignore its invitation. It is the windbag squeezed into the next airline seat, just itching to strike up a 500-mile conversation.

Right now it sits on the desk, unopened. Before that, it was crammed deep inside the briefcase, forgotten. And before that, it waited on that corner of the kitchen counter where unsolicited credit card applications are kept, untouched. Read me, it keeps nagging. Read me.

It is the California Ballot Pamphlet, swollen for this election to 112 pages of recycled paper, containing what can seem like 112 recycled proposals, arguments, explanations, warnings. Across page after page the small type runs, broken only by occasional riffs of rhetoric in BIG CAPITAL LETTERS. A dozen ballot propositions and three legislative bond acts are chewed upon by all sorts of folks, many of them strangers, all determined to bend minds:

On page 29, Amy Schur, Carol Edwards and Richard Solomon warn that “good intentions aren’t good enough. . . . DON’T WASTE YOUR VOTE ON 208. VOTE YES ON PROPOSITION 212.” On Page 37, Connie Trimble, owner of a “small family restaurant,” asserts--in italics--that should Proposition 210 pass, “I’ll be forced to pass on these wage increases to my customers, many of whom are senior citizens on fixed incomes.” While on Page 57, Sister Carol Padilla advises that “California needs health care reform but Proposition 214--like Prop. 216--WILL MAKE THINGS WORSE.”

Want more? Didn’t think so.

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It all started--as they teach in high school civics--with Hiram Johnson. In 1908 the legendary reformer campaigned for governor, vowing to release California from control of railroad barons. His crowbar would be a newfangled political device: the ballot initiative. Voters would be empowered to make law themselves, circumventing the railroad’s hired politicians.

For a long time it worked pretty well. Usage of the crowbar was selective. When the legislators behaved, initiatives were rare. When they strayed, or became paralyzed by partisan politics, volume picked up. In just the last quarter-century, initiatives allowed Californians to restore the death penalty, protect (sometimes) the coast and, most famously, limit property taxes.

Along the way, politicians and their money pals came to see propositions as too wonderful to waste on--say it with me now--The People. For the parties, initiatives have evolved into a tactical tool for energizing blocs of voters. Want a turnout of Democrats? Put something green on the ballot. Republican? Anything that sends more criminals to prison will do. The underwriters of politics caught on: Why fritter away dough on legislators when the heavy lifting is done through initiatives? Contributions to initiative campaigns ballooned from roughly $9 million in 1976 to $110 million in 1990. In 1988 came a watershed moment: For the first time, more money was spent on initiatives than legislative lobbying.

“Today, the initiative process is dominated,” writes Jim Shultz in “The Initiative Cookbook,” from which those numbers were culled, “by exactly the kind of money it was designed to overcome.”

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Shultz is founder of The Democracy Center, a San Francisco-based organization which helps nonprofits develop their political skills. In this context, he wrote a strikingly complete primer on proposition politics: “Whether you love initiatives or hate them, ballot measures are now the way we make big decisions in California, and the public has a right to know the rules of the game.”

Throughout the 1960s, only nine initiatives total were put before voters. This year alone, there have been 17, asking citizens to make policy on everything from affirmative action to mountain lion hunting, from managed health care to medicinal marijuana. The escalation has been accompanied by tactical refinements. By design, the pols have made it more difficult to plow through the pamphlet, sort through the radio spots, ferret out the claims and counterclaims that pingpong across the newspaper accounts--to figure out who is behind a measure, and why, and what it might do.

Many voters, confused and frustrated, simply go down the ballot checking no, no, no, no. There are, however, more constructive ideas afloat for retaking the initiative process. Shultz’s list ranges from development of a better voters guide to fuller disclosure of major campaign contributors. Expect resistance. Having seized the crowbar, the folks who run politics naturally will not be inclined just to give it back. In the end, it likely will require an initiative to reform the initiative process.