Vote No on Everything

As a service to readers living in the State of California, I feel it is my civic duty as a self-published, marginally-informed pundit to offer my endorsements for Tuesday’s special election: Vote No on Everything.

I’m not just suggesting Vote No in order to be rebellious or anarchistic. I’m not suggesting Vote No because it’s "cool." I suggest Vote No because ballot initiatives are lousy policy, giving the power to the people. And have you met the people? The people are morons.

In all seriousness, I understand why people like the idea of ballot initiatives. "Cast your vote and take back control from those pin-heads in (Sacramento, Des Moines, wherever)." But the fact is we live in a representative democracy. Unless we decide we want to head to our local church or elementary school on a weekly basis to vote for every piece of proposed legislation, all these initiatives do is tie the hands of our elected officials and create a mess down the road.

An example?

I was the education beat reporter in Ames, Iowa during a stretch of budget cuts. So I spent countless hours in the back of School Board and other committee meetings with a notepad, pencil and look of sheer boredom. But I did learn a few things.

Each school district’s budget, like the state budget itself, contains many programs that cannot be cut under any circumstances. The reason is often because they were mandated by ballot initiative. I’m sure the people who voted to mandate special education or after school programs felt they were doing a good thing – but there’s a problem. Nobody ever passes an initiative mandating math classes. After all, the school would never cut math classes, right? But when it’s time for budget cuts and all those special programs are untouchable, guess what gets the axe? No new protractors this fiscal year.

These mandatory spending bills are only one type of voter initiative, but they illustrate the larger problem with the system. Voter initiatives create rigid, often arbitrary barriers that are difficult to correct.

The sheer volume of the problem in California is staggering. Every ballot is weighed down by a series of often-conflicting initiatives. On last year’s ballot, Propositions 60 and 62 both dealt with whether or not voters should be allowed to vote for any candidate regardless of party affiliation in a primary election. Rather than one Proposition to which voters could vote yes or no, voters had to vote yes to one and no to the other oppositely worded proposition.

The result? 14 percent of voters voted either yes or no for both. That’s a lot of confused voters dictating state policy.

And let’s not forget the most offensive voter initiative in recent memory – the California recall election. Governor Gray Davis was removed from office by the same voters who elected him just a year before. Was there corruption? Had Gray Davis broken the law? No. Voters just didn’t like him that much and/or wanted to see Arnold f***ing Schwarzenegger in office. So now we’ve got a buffoon muscle man in office while our economy continues to tank. Thanks, voters.

I for one am sick of sorting through the mess of ballot initiatives and even more sick of the horrible legislation they create. So from now on, I’ll Vote No on everything. Measures I support, measures I oppose – it doesn’t matter. I’ll Vote No on the entire, broken process.