Should California Change Its Voter Initiative Process?

The City of San Diego has already bustled with the issue of this year's exceedingly packed ballots. Council members entertained the idea of putting the text of some matches online but instead will be receiving two sample ballots to contain the city measures up for a vote. In fact, California voters statewide run the risk of being overwhelmed by the number and complexity of the propositions on the November ballot. Out of the Gorney, Los Angeles prosecutor for the New York Times, looked into reasons why Californians are facing this ballot measure deluge. He joins me now. Adam, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Or 17 statewide voter initiatives this year. The most since the year 2001, why is this your so unusually packed? There are a couple reasons. One is California Legislature change the law so that all these initiatives go in November rather than in June when there is a primary. The second reason is that it's a presidential election year and there's a bigger turnout then. There's a bigger Democratic turnout than. A lot of backers of initiatives in particularly the marijuana legalization one, the death penalty repeal one, wanted to wait until they had a more favorable electorate for what they wanted to do. The third reason is that in order to qualify for the ballot, you need to collect 5% signatures of people who voted in the last gubernatorial election. The last election was Jerry Brown versus -- fill in the blank. The turnout then was 24%. I'm guessing, it was very low. It easier to qualify. Since these guys are paying by the signature, to get on the ballot, it's cheaper to get on the ballot. All those things came together to create this ballot gridlock the people in California are facing. On California look at this and they look at each other and say,.we have legislature? Why are there so many proposals on the ballot instead of the lawmakers dealing with them? There's a lot of reasons for that. For example, there's a two dollar per pack cigarette tax that the billionaire environmentalist is putting on. He said he's putting it on that way because they have not been able to get it through the legislature. That's a big reason for it. other similar organizations like the death penalty and I think with marijuana, the legislature has been tentative about doing that the other thing about them is what you get a past as an initiative, is harder to change it. In other words, if one of these initiatives is passed, the legislature can't change it or amendment. It has to go back to voters. If you're trying to get something put into law in a long-term way, this is a good way to do it. California is one of the bluest states in the nation so there's really not much of a contest when it comes to the presidential election. You say these propositions are where the action will be in this election. How much money is being spent on these measures? I would guess him easily, in excess of $100 million. You have the tobacco industry in the pharmaceutical industry here. You have the former owner of Napster and guys love a lot of money who are ready to spend a. I think will be easily be over $100 million. I don't think voters in California will see any presidential election ads at all. I think it will be added to these initiatives. It will probably be tough for voters to keep track of these issues. As I said in the beginning, there are 12 additional measures on the San Diego city ballot alone. Is that right. Yes. Did you find that voters tend to get frustrated with long ballots and maybe just not vote on some issues? Yes. One thing people find is that voters confront these things in either don't vote or vote no down the line. Thinking they must all be bad. I didn't realize you had 12. We have 1 or 2 here in Los Angeles. It is an industry of people whose job it is to get these things past or defeated. And they look for ways to distinguish them. Either with their name or their number or advertising. All they want is for people to going to go, okay, I don't know what prop 55 is but I'm just going to -- I don't know if Alan is -- I do think that Mayor wanting -- with legalizing marijuana is a good idea. I'm going to find that on the ballot. I will vote yes. What you can expect voters to know everything. Nobody can. To come down to the factor that these initiatives need to find a way to motivate people to vote for them or scare them. I'm interested in the fact that you wrote that conventional wisdom is that it's easier to defeat a ballot measure than it is to pass one. What's the dynamic on that? Two reasons. One, is easier to say no then yes if you're looking at one of these things. I don't know what this is, I'm not going to vote for. I don't trust the government. I don't trust these people. The other thing is there are ways that people can frame these things as -- this is in California for 20 years. This is a special interest in trying to get stuff there. these are buzzwords you hear people used to get stuff defeated. You do that and there is a history of them doing it. My guess is that, I should predict, my guess is the marijuana thing will pass this time. I think the state has changed in the world has changed. Remember it was on the ballot either 2 afforded years ago and it was defeated. It's easy -- it's easier to vote no then yes. People know how to take advantage of that. What criticism have you heard about this kind of overloaded ballot. I know that we've had this voter initiative for 100 years in California and it's part of the way we do business here but is there some sort of criticism in the idea of trying to streamline this? I don't know how you would do it. They tried to do it last year by giving time for an issue to get pulled back. It doesn't seem to have worked. The criticism is that this system is open to manipulation by people who have money and know how the system works. You might support some of these things that people with a lot of money are pushing but you may not. It's easy to get stuff through if the legislature will not get through. I think it's asking a lot for voters. I just wrote about this. I tend to go through all 17 and tell you what they did. I need to go back and study it. I think it's asking a lot for voters to do that. In San Diego you're talking about 29 initiatives. I don't think there's I'm not sure that's the best way for democracy to work in terms of making people making reasoned decisions. We shall see. I've been talking with Adam Nagorny, Los Angeles pierogi for the New York Times. Adam, thank you. You're welcome.