Voters Get Last Word

Countless words--heartfelt and hired, meant to enlighten and meant to obscure--have gusted around the 15 statewide propositions on Tuesday’s ballot.

Voters soon will have the final word, putting a quick stop to the winds by quietly pushing styluses. Before they do, some questions not often posed during the long issue campaigns bear asking:

Are the propositions more than pet concerns that interest groups and ideologues have succeeded in elevating to the status of ballot questions? Do they really touch on the lives and direct interests of voters, and if so, how?

To get some indication of the answers, The Times invited seven voters to talk at length about the ballot issues and their own lives. All seven, most of whom live in the San Fernando Valley, had participated in a recent Times Poll. What they said has been condensed but remains in their own words.

The ballot measures they focused on as particularly meaningful included Proposition 205, which would provide $700 million in bonds to build and renovate county jails and juvenile detention facilities; Proposition 206, which would authorize $400 million in bonds for home and farm loans to military veterans (the Cal-Vet program); Proposition 209, which would abolish affirmative action in state and local government employment and state university admissions; Proposition 210, which would raise the minimum wage in the state to $5.75 an hour by March 1998; Propositions 214 and 216, which would provide closer government regulation of health maintenance organizations; and Proposition 215, which would legalize marijuana for medical use via doctor’s prescription.

Despite poring over the state-provided voter information pamphlet, all of those interviewed admitted to at least some confusion about what the ballot issues are truly about and blame misleading pro and con advertising.

Many also voiced resentment of the initiative process itself for their being called upon to make judgments about matters they don’t always entirely understand.

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ALICE McCAIN, a real estate agent, mother of four and grandmother of two, lives in Woodland Hills.

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The initiative process needs to be changed radically.

When the initiative process was passed, it happened at a time when I was not in tune--my four children came within a span of 6 1/2 years--at a time when they were little and we were busy. At that time there weren’t term limits, and politicians were less attentive to people’s needs. It took them forever to get anything passed, so I remember the initiative process was a way for us to get laws on the books that we could not convince Sacramento to get passed.

The thought process was great, but here we’ve got four positive things, six negative things on the same initiative, so which way do you go? Do you take the things that are positive and get stuck with the junk that’s in there? And for people who are where I was 20 years ago, who has time to sit down and study 15 initiatives? You can’t understand these. You either try to make the best of these, or you go right down the line saying, no, no, no, no, no. Because no is better than yes. At least you’re not making a constitutional law of something that is so bizarre.

It’s a tremendous waste of money, time and energy, and at the cost of the good issues, like Cal-Vet.

That Cal-Vet program is such a wonderful loan program. It figures strongly in my business and even more so now that the earthquake insurance business has taken such a difficult turn. You can get earthquake insurance for practically nothing with a Cal-Vet loan.

I know that on the bond issues, people get nervous because it’s mortgaging your future, but the Cal-Vet always pays its own way. People don’t realize that. It’s a program that doesn’t get enough publicity. I haven’t heard any campaign ads on this.

To get earthquake insurance in the San Fernando Valley has become so unbelievably costly that now we will have better use of Cal-Vet, especially with first-time home buyers in the lower price ranges. I think they get the insurance automatically, and the deductible is minimal. You can get earthquake insurance other ways, but it’s cost-prohibitive. If you’re a veteran and you’re looking to buy property under about $200,000 and at 8% interest, fixed rate, and be able to get the earthquake insurance--whoa. It creates more qualified buyers. It definitely has to do with my everyday life, especially since the bulk of the buyers right now are under-$200,000 buyers.

But you know, when all’s said and done, I think we’re going to find that probably everything is going to be defeated, which is a pity because, like I say, that Cal-Vet is important.