Opinion: Calif. lawmakers not truthful with ballot measures
By Dan Walters, Sacramento Bee
As the ballot measure evolved into California’s primary public policy tool over the last three-plus decades, clever people were paid large sums of money to figure out how to persuade voters. They adopted deception – there’s no other word for it – as a technique.
Dan Walters
Measures were written that purported to do one thing while semi-secretly doing another, based on a cynical, although perhaps realistic, assumption that a significant number of voters would ignore details and act on first impulse.
Proposition 25, placed before voters in 2010 by Democratic politicians and their allies, principally unions, was one of many examples.
Its true underlying purpose was to change the legislative vote requirement on state budgets and so-called trailer bills from two-thirds to a simple majority, thus cutting Republicans out of the process. But the wording of the measure implied that its major purpose was to punish the Legislature for missing a June 15 deadline for passing a budget.
And who didn’t know this? Low info voters.
They invented self-flushing toilets because the general public cannot be trusted to flush their own doggoned toilets. Yet we trust people to vote responsibly?
Think about it.
THIS WAS HUGE. Read the “underlying purpose” carefully. The democrats held a slight majority in the legislature , perhaps 55 %. Then prop. 25 proposed dropping the required vote approval percentage from 67% to 51%. Passing the proposition guaranteed that democrats would get their way, and republicans held no strength in the vote. The vote would result in 55% for the demos budget, a passing, simple majority. Every citizen that voted in a republican legislator is cut out of the legislative process.
It’s no big mystery why California’s recent economic progress coincides with the obstructionist fringe wing of the GOP being marginalized- finally we can get some things done and move forward- the author of this article, reaganomics lover Dan Walters, has been on the wrong side of every issue the state has faced in the last 4 decades- hes just like most on that side of the aisle-consistently wrong.
Obviously you are so concerned with getting your way you oppose a fair vote in the state legislature. There is a personality disorder that suits you perfectly. It’s called narcissistic disorder.
The context of the article was primarily about deception to win elections via ballot measures. Sad.
Secondarily it warns of power unrequited.
2/3 was written in the state constitution for a good reason.
Somehow I hope the early framers “experiment’ won’t one day implode because of such techniques to win power.
YES DAN – – – But I’m afraid we’re at least half way gone. The Bill of Rights are not rights retained by the people. I’m afraid that the lawyers are holding our rights in their pockets. It appears that when citizens need their rights protected in the courts the citizens are required to pay attorneys thousands of dollars. This is not what the framers intended.