I Hate Ballot Propositions

 

I live in one of those states where almost anyone, with a little effort, can put almost any question to the voters to get a yes or no answer to a proposed change in the law. This time around there are 12 such measures here dealing with everything from digital privacy to allowing felons to vote, and from rent control to dialysis clinics.

Propositions, in the broadest sense, have the goal of doing what state legislators could not or would not do, or simply injecting fairness into an unfair situation. Most sound good, but they can be confusing, and the voter has to be careful. Many start with what seems like a worthy cause, but if you dig in a little bit, you find that the fine print includes zingers that protect certain institutions from being included or change the law in a not-so-good way. Yes can sometimes mean no, and vice versa. More often than not, a proposition is on the ballot to “fix” an unintended consequence of another ballot  measure that was approved five or 10 years ago or more. And finally, you have to read about who the major supporters and campaign funders of a measure are, and you say to yourself, yeah, no wonder they wanted THAT done.

This year, it hurts a little, because many of us are in a hurry to return our ballot or vote early where it’s permitted, but all those down-ballot items take time, and woe betide you if you’re voting in person and are stuck in line behind someone who hasn’t decided ahead of time how they’re going to vote on all that stuff. If you don’t vote on these things, you are leaving possible life-changing decisions up to others. An approved proposition may someday come back to bite you in a place you weren’t expecting. The sensible ones can lose and the crazy ones might win, or they may be challenged in court.

To be fair, there are positives about propositions. Sometimes a state legislature and the executive branch are dominated by the wrong party or people. A legislature can pass crazy laws under the radar, and with propositions, at least there is usually healthy debate about an issue, so we get educated. Even so, we have to put up with all the TV ads, and the better-funded side in a proposition campaign usually has more of them.

Maybe my real problem is, I’m just tired of all the extra noise that propositions add. I just want to tell all the ballot measure partisans, hey everyone, I know you mean well, but can’t we deal with all this a little later? In this election, I’ve got other fish to fry, like maybe the future of the republic.

 

 

Having It My Way

 

For a democracy, our system is pretty undemocratic in quite a few ways, and it starts with voting. Some states want to see as many people vote as legally possible, while others are bent on keeping those it deems unqualified from doing so. Even at this nation’s founding, only the "right” people could vote. They had to be men, to start with.

In my opinion, which I’m not always so humble about, I think it’s time we nationalized all general federal elections, applying the same set of rules to everything from registration to ballot-casting and counting. All deadlines would be the same, as would the rules for eligibility, with sufficient access points to ensure that voters wouldn’t have to stand in long lines, even in high-turnout races. These rules would apply to elections for federal offices -- the Senate and the House as well as for President. It would be the same in all 50 states and possessions where voting in such elections happens.

Now you will obviously say, that would deprive the states of the right to control their own election process. Well, not entirely. For the moment at least, they could continue with their current systems for in-state and local elections, from governor and state legislature on down.

Next you will say, that’s ridiculous, then there would be two different sets of elections. That’s enormously expensive and outrageously inefficient. Correct. But if the states simply adopted the federal rules for all the elections they conduct, it would save time, money, and paperwork.

If you are a constitutional lawyer, you are probably laughing so hard that you have spewed out your coffee and tears are rolling down your cheeks. But I’m not through! I think there should be a federal Department of Elections with its own cabinet secretary. States generally have this function; why shouldn’t the federal government?

Discrimination rears its head in many forms, but the one power that citizens share equally, at least in theory, is the right and the ability to vote. When we drive from one side of the country to the other, the rules of the road are similar enough that we can easily continue our journey without having to learn a new set of rules at each state border. Why can’t voting be like that?

 

Not So Ready to Rumble

We saw the Presidential debate, or as much as we could stand of it, and the verdicts are all in: Dumpster fire, s***show. It was an international embarrassment for our country, just another one on the pile, and Donald Trump is getting the blame. If Joe Biden made any mistakes, we missed them, because Mr. Trump was so busy talking over him. But the two participants aside, what do we expect of these things?

For days leading up to this event, it was billed as a head-to-head battle. There was concern about whether Joe Biden could go the distance. We waited to see which side could  score points or draw the first blood. The promos made the debate sound almost like a heavyweight fight. I’m surprised we didn’t have Jim Lampley and Larry Merchant analyzing it.

Chris Wallace was criticized for being unable to control the debate. It’s not as if he doesn’t have an authoritarian voice, as his father did. But he couldn’t shout the President down. What he needed was the ability to kill Mr. Trump’s mic during interruptions, but he didn’t have it. Maybe that will be the rule for subsequent match-ups.

Tuesday night was just a reminder, though, that entirely too much weight isplaced on these debates. Personally, I think the Town Hall format is much more effective in showing us who the candidates really are. It’s one thing for candidates to dodge questions from a moderator or a panel of journalists, but dodging them from a regular citizen is quite another. We learn something about how a candidate interacts with what we might call “real” people.

At this point, the vast majority of us don’t even need debates. We’ve had a long time to see these two guys in action. They both have track records, and we have probably made up our minds. Even if we have just awakened from a long sleep, there are websites and maybe someone on a screen or speaker, on a newspaper editorial page, or in our life whose opinion we respect, to help us decide.

As I said earlier, though, my other concern is that so many of us are so anxious to have our ballots counted in this contest that we will rush to mail or deposit them or do early voting, and the state propositions, state and local candidates, and local measures won’t get the attention they deserve this year.

On the other hand, if we have all this extra time at home now, thanks to COVID, we can put it to good use.