Ballot Initiatives

[Ellen Taylor <ellenstaylor@yahoo.com>]

Although ballot initiatives are one part of "direct democracy", to think we can reform this campaign finance issue by increasing the role of the ballot initiative is not realistic. In California, the ballot initiative started 90 years ago to reign in the power of special interests, but the process has now come full circle. It is presently mainly a tool of special interest to get laws in place that are usually poorly conceived, poorly drafted, and frequently not constitutional.  On a recent ballot, Californians had to vote on 29 initiatives - now who can learn enough about that many initiatives to be be able to vote intelligently?  What began as a righteous experiment has turned into a horror for those of us who want an informed electorate to exercise the vote.  

Special interest groups have taken advantage of the initiative process - they form a sponsoring group with a deceptively innocuous name (such as Californians Against Unregulated Gambling - actually the Las Vegas gambling powers), they spend millions of dollars qualifying it for the ballot, promoting it through  shallow ads (the best sound bite wins), and then the people vote on it --  all of which is disturbing because the people are really being hoodwinked much of the time.

Making campaign finance reform depend on ballot initiatives is not only simplistic, it is asking for trouble.