A "User Friendly" Process

As an absentee voter, I have already cast my vote and sent in my ballot, but hundreds of thousands of people will vote to possibly make some big changes in our state on November 8. With the Special Statewide Election only days away, it is time to take a step back and look at the actual initiative process.

Last Tuesday the Initiative Madness Bloggers had the opportunity to speak with a leading attorney in the California initiative process who told us about the steps to writing an initiative and getting it on the ballot. What we found out was not encouraging.

User Friendly? I don’t think so. The attorney informed us that to draft a credible initiative we would need to hire a lawyer, political consultant, and a campaign committee including a treasurer, conduct focus groups to see what the public would want out of our initiative, and gather around 1.1 million signatures. All of this and our initiative would only be considered for an election that would not take place for nearly a year. September 8 was the deadline for next year’s November ballot, so by the time we got anything done with our initiative, we probably would not see it on the ballot for two or three years!

Grass Roots Friendly? Unfortunately, the grass is not green on our side. The cost of getting an initiative on the ballot is in the millions of dollars range. A lawyer charges anywhere from $300 to $500 per hour and an initiative could take months to draft. Hiring a political consultant costs several hundred thousand dollars. Professional signature gatherers charge $1 to $2 per signature and while signature gatherers could be volunteers, there are many complicated rules about gathering signatures, so a serious campaign would hire professionals.

Will Anything Really Change? The attorney asked us to think about stipulations in our initiative. In the case that our initiative passed, but did not work exactly as written, would we give power to the legislature to change it or would we require that another initiative be passed to fix the error? Does our initiative really need to be statewide or could it be passed as a local initiative? Are there any past initiatives that we could work with? Are there any initiatives on upcoming ballots that we could ally with? If passing our initiative meant taking funding away from things like education, would we still be willing to try to pass it?

Speaking with this expert really opened my eyes to our state’s political process. Maybe the initiative process is user friendly, but to which users? In a system where only politically knowledgeable, wealthy people can get their opinions on the ballot, whose side is the government taking? Before voting this Tuesday, take a step back and try to see who exactly is behind each initiative you vote on. Good luck at the polls!