How I voted (or, Why direct democracy is a baaaaad idea)

You may have seen me mention this before, but I am firmly against direct democracy, government by initiative, or whatever you want to call it. It is hugely inefficient and expensive, and it has left the government of California in a hopeless quagmire of poorly-written and poorly thought out regulations. Initiatives seem to win or lose based directly on how much money is funneled into their campaigns; the fact is that the average person is just not qualified (or in many cases, interested) to govern him/herself. Besides, that's what we pay our elected officials for. Legislators now don't earn their salaries, and indeed seem to delight in causing gridlock in the state senate and assembly. It's like they're trying not to get anything done.

That said, it is a huge responsibility being a voter in the state of California. This November, we have no less than 16 (16!) statewide initiatives on the ballot, and that's not counting the many other local initiatives. There were 3 in my district. Here, briefly, is how I voted on each of the initiatives (I've already discussed my choice on the presidential election to death):

• Prop 1A - Yes. This proposition gives control of local government revenues back to local government, and not state government, which has been shamelessly raiding local coffers for years.
• Prop 59 - Yes. I'm all for more transparency in government, but I have to say it seems a bit silly to put restrictions on how the law is interpreted in legislation.
• Prop 60 - No. Prop 60 was put on the ballot solely to oppose prop 62, the open ballot initiative (more on this later); since they oppose each other, only one or the other (with the highest votes, naturally) can pass. However, it proposes no real change to how primary voting works now, so there's no point in voting for it even if you oppose prop 62, which I do.
• Prop 60A - No. This is just the type of legislation that has crippled California's government. It will only tie our lawmakers' hands. Allocating revenues and expenditures in the state budget should be left in the hands of the people we hired to do this very thing.
• Prop 61 - Yes. I know California hardly needs more debt, but this is what bonds are for in the first place.
• Prop 62 - No. This is, to put it plainly, undemocratic. Allowing only the top two vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation, to advance from the primary to the general election is just not fair. Each party should have the right to have a candidate represent it in the general election.
• Prop 63 - No. This measure unfairly targets a small portion of the tax-paying population for a specific purpose. I agree that mental health programs would be tremendously useful and could even save taxpayers a lot of money in the long run, but the way that they (Prop 63 supporters) are going about implementing them is all wrong. Again, budget allocations should be left to the discretion of our lawmakers. I cannot state this strongly enough. I am against any measure that allocates budget, raises taxes or creates budget allocation restrictions (as this one does) for any one purpose.
• Prop 64 - No. I don't believe that the general public has the expertise necessary to effectively decide this matter. I agree that frivolous lawsuits are a problem, but if this matter is to be legislated at all (I have some doubt on this; it seems to me to be a fundamentally judicial matter), it should be left in the hands of our expert lawmakers. That's what we pay them for.
• Prop 65 - No. A weaker version of prop 1A, this was superceded and made obsolete by prop 1A, which I am already voting for. It would be harmful to vote for this one.
• Prop 66 - Yes. I am no expert on this (which is why I was sorely tempted to vote no, just on principle), but from all I've learned on this subject, a lot of nonviolent multiple offenders are getting life sentences and clogging up our already overloaded jail system. Resentencing such nonviolent offenders to shorter, more reasonable periods of incarceration will reduce the load. Passing this measure promises save the state millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars, for which there are ample other good uses. However, I am very nervous about the consequence of my vote, because of my aforementioned lack fo expertise.
• Prop 67 - No. Again with the voter-decided budget restrictions. No, no, no. And again, no. Besides, to voice a purely self-interested reason, I think fees are high enough already (although the liberal side of me won't complain (too much) if state government raises taxes for general budgetary purposes); I pay as much (seriously) in fees, surcharges and taxes ($8.00) as I do for my landline phone service ($8.50) each month. That can't be right.
• Prop 68 - No. Even prop 68's backers (gambling special interests) gave up on it. Gov. Schwarzenegger has already negotiated better deals with Indian tribes than are offered in either proposition 68 or 70 to get money for the state. Besides, and more importantly, Native American tribes are sovereign nations. It is not right (and when you get down to it, useless) for us to be dictating what they do on their land, and how much of a share we should get of their money.
• Prop 69 - No. This one's a no-brainer. People who are arrested, but not necessarily charged with any crime, should by no means be forced to contribute a DNA sample to a state-wide database. No less should those who are charged but not convicted be forced to do the same. Even if this one passes, I would hope that it would be recognized to be in clear violation of Californians' consitutional right to privacy.
• Prop 70 - No. See my entry for prop 68.
• Prop 71 - No. I was really torn on this one. I am a strong supporter of stem cell research, but again, prop 71's backers are going about it all wrong. I would not have opposed a bond to fund the research, although I really do believe that medical research funding is a budgetary matter (yeah, yeah, you've heard me say this before). What clinched it for me is that these guys want to make stem cell research a constitutional right (and prohibit funding of human reproductive cloning research). That is patently ridiculous. We should not be legislating on this issue! This is an issue for the courts.
• Finally, Prop 72 - Yes. I was again torn on this one. I was at first concerned that this would be cripplingly expensive to small business, until I learned that there is a tiered system of what health benefits employers, depending on size, would need to provide for employees. Although I hesitate to impose such a huge cost on employers, the cost rests better there than on the state, and leaving so many people uninsured is not a viable option. The last thing California needs is more bureaucracy. In the long run, I think this is a good plan. This is another one that I feel I am just not qualified to vote on.

Whew. That took a while. Let me say again that I feel I am severely unqualified to be voting on matters of such importance; on many of these issues, I'd need a law degree to really be able to make an informed decision. And I think I can say with some confidence that I spent more time than a lot of others learning about the issues in this election. That does not make me feel confident about the outcome.

This is why we have a representative democracy (although in this state it can be argued that it is in name only); people in this state, for the most part, have neither the time nor the inclination to learn about everything they should in order to vote informedly and effectively on these ballot measures. There's a reason that governing anything is a full-time job. We should let our lawmakers do the jobs we pay them for; we don't have the time or the qualifications to do it ourselves.