Flawed Way to Make Laws

Big spending and a surge of Republican voters appear to have had a major impact on the fates of key ballot propositions in Tuesday’s primary election. Once again, we see how the flawed initiative process results in bad lawmaking.

Massive infusions of money, mostly to buy television ads, helped insurance companies and Indian tribes pass measures they sponsored. Conservatives boosted Proposition 22, the initiative to ban recognition of gay marriage in California, and probably contributed to the narrow defeat of Proposition 26, a proposal to lower the passing vote for local school bonds from two-thirds to a simple majority.

Proposition 26 lost, 51% to 49%, despite a $23-million campaign. In a different election with a different mix of voters, it might have passed. The Los Angeles Times Poll found that more than two-thirds of Republican voters identified themselves as conservatives and about one-fourth as evangelical Christians, a big increase over the numbers in California’s last primary, four years ago. The cause is uncertain, but they may been spurred to action by John McCain’s attack on conservative Christian leaders Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and the controversy over Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s visit to Bob Jones University in South Carolina.

Voters were in a more generous mood when it came to statewide bond measures. Four of five state bonds totaling $5 billion were approved. They needed only a majority vote to pass.

The total turnout appeared to surpass the 52% forecast by Secretary of State Bill Jones. It was the highest in 16 years. Oddly, turnout was lower this year in strongly Democratic Los Angeles and San Francisco counties, possibly because of the lack of a competitive Democratic presidential contest.

The defeat of Proposition 26 had roots in the initiative that fueled California’s ballot proposition fever: Proposition 13 in 1978. Proposition 26 would have lowered the threshold of local school bond issues. The opposition campaign, led by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers’ Assn., had only about $1 million to spend but effectively delivered a message that approval of 26 would increase property taxes. The message was particularly persuasive with older homeowners, some of whom had rebelled against soaring property taxes in the 1970s with passage of Proposition 13. That divisive measure capped property taxes at 1% of a home’s value, with the exception of revenue needed to finance local bond debt. Statewide bond issues are paid for out of existing state taxes.

In all, proponents and opponents of the 20 ballot measures raised an estimated $150 million for their causes. The biggest spenders were insurance companies, which put up $50 million in a deceptive campaign to successfully overturn two 1999 laws that would have granted consumers some limited right to sue insurance companies.

Indian tribes raised $23.6 million in behalf of Proposition 1A, which now legalizes operation of Nevada-style gambling casinos on tribal lands in California. After a brutal struggle over a similar measure two years ago, there was not much big-money opposition to 1A on Tuesday, and it passed with 65% of the vote.

Money goes hand in hand with politics in an election year. Sponsors of ballot measures try to figure out whether their chances will be better in a spring primary contest or a general election in the fall, when national issues create larger turnouts.

Uncertainty is part of electoral politics. Planners cannot predict when unconnected events, such as this year’s surprisingly bitter Bush-McCain battle, might affect the turnout. The best insurance is simply to raise and spend as much money as possible. This is not the grass-roots democracy intended by the initiative’s populist authors a century ago. It is, alas, how the business of politics is done in California today.