Government by Initiative

Re “Flawed Way to Make Laws,” editorial, March 9: I do not see what difference it makes what people’s religious beliefs are when they vote. Would you rather conservative and Christian voters stay at home and let everyone else run the country or contribute their vote? Do they not, also, have the right to vote their conscience, even collectively, and even if that conscience is influenced or guided by religious beliefs? Or is it finally time for religious apartheid?

These same conservative, Christian voters whom you point at for defeat of cherished Props. 22 and 26, if they are as big a bloc as you are implying, must also have been “in a more generous mood” in order for the other bond issues to have passed. Or do we only blame conservative, Christian voters for defeats and ignore contributions that you consider positive? Do they only get the blame so they can, someday, be safely shelved from public life?

DAVID M. MIRANDA

Covina

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Your March 9 articles and editorial blame conservatives for the failure of Prop. 26. This may have been a factor, but I believe that it was more an appeal for fiscal responsibility within the public school system. A quick review of newspaper articles over the past several months will reveal the staggering incompetence, at all levels, of those responsible for the use of money raised through bond issues.

Further, money from some earlier bond issues remains unspent in the face of schools that are in terrible disrepair. Consider this and the administrative overload of most school systems and you do not have to be a conservative to reject an easier path to more taxpayer dollars. The school systems need to remedy this problem and then there will be few of us who would be against more money for education.

Even conservatives understand the relationship between the well-being of the state and our support of all levels of education.

IVAN CATTON

Los Angeles

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Re your editorial: Speaking with several legislative staff in Sacramento about the introduction of bills, I was impressed with a recurring comment: too busy. I learned of the importance of the role that lobbyists played in researching and shepherding bills through the legislative process.

So cutting back on the initiative process when people in Sacramento are too busy is not going to give rise to better laws. Initiative financing is one area that needs attention; another area is adequate budgeting of government staff.

An unexplored area that might dramatically reduce manipulation of the initiative process is the use of the Internet as the official forum for debate on the initiatives, with voters specifying how much debate they wish to hear.

VAN AJEMIAN

Los Angeles

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The fact that both Prop. 1A, promoting gambling, and Prop. 22, opposing same-sex marriage, passed overwhelmingly points up the hypocrisy of the religious right. These groups spent millions on billboard, radio and television ads to push Prop. 22, which at best addressed a remote, merely potential danger to marriage. Gambling already destroys marriages, not to mention families and even lives. There was even a little girl killed at a casino recently, because her father was too busy gambling to look after her properly. Yet I heard not one word from the religious right on 1A.

RICHARD HORNBY

Pasadena

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Re “Palm Springs Tribe, Trump Sign Casino Deal,” March 9: I didn’t know that Donald Trump was a Native American! How swell that he’s willing to help his people become self-reliant by building them a big Vegas-style hotel and casino complex. And what a surprise it must have been when he just showed up the day after the vote with plans and a contract.

ART VERITY

Van Nuys

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Prop. 23, the “none of the above” proposal, has the distinction of getting the largest NOTA vote of all the propositions. It attracted the least total votes (adding the for and against numbers) of all the propositions or approximately 1 million less than the total number of votes cast in the presidential primary.

KEITH PRICE

Los Angeles