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Voters assume do-nothing lawmakers' jobs |
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AV Press |
| Date Posted: |
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Oct 18, 07 - 3:57 PM |
| Where are you from? |
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Antelope Valley |
| Message: |
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Voters assume do-nothing lawmakers' jobs
This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press on Thursday, October 18, 2007.
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EDITORIAL OF WEDNESDAY, OCT. 17 - California - with the largest population of any of the 50 United States - is taking an alternate route to democracy.
As envisioned by our Founding Fathers, a legislative branch of government would represent the collective interests of the citizenry. Their complaint under British rule was that they had suffered from "taxation without representation."
Now, our once-Golden State is pioneering a new approach to government by the people by loading up every election ballot with numerous propositions. During the past seven years, the state's voters have had to be the "deciders" on 86 ballot propositions.
The authors of a new book say that by approving 46 of the ballot measures, the people have established a new milestone in direct democracy in California.
Mark Baldassare is president of the Public Policy Institute of California. Cheryl Katz is a journalist and independent public-opinion researcher.
Their book is titled "The Coming Age of Direct Democracy." This direct democracy trend, they say, has resulted from the Legislature's increasing inability to govern.
Notice the evidence:
Partisan gridlock caused by gerrymandered districts that favor political extremes, both conservative and liberal.
Term limits, which have retired experienced lawmakers earlier than in the past.
When they are forced out, they take with them the institutional memory developed while they were on the job.
The two-thirds vote requirement in the Assembly and Senate for budget and tax matters. This rule keeps lawmakers' hands tied on many issues, inasmuch as a minority of one-third of our lawmakers plus one can control the decision-making process.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has accelerated the trend. No other governor in the state's history has gone to the voters to accomplish his legislative agenda so frequently. Schwarzenegger went around the Legislature in 2005 to qualify his reform initiatives - and all of them failed.
The writers say one way to alleviate this problem was offered in Proposition 56, which would have lowered the two-thirds vote requirement to a 55% majority. But voters gave the measure thumbs down in 2004.
California will conduct three statewide ballot elections in 2008. All will be loaded down with complicated measures couched in legalese and written to keep voters from seeing that the new laws' effect, frequently, would be exactly opposite the public's desires.
Next year, decisions on health care reform and new water delivery systems probably will be left up to voters.
Because self-serving legislators refused this year to relinquish control of their politically driven redistricting process, voters will be forced to change the system to take it out of the hands of politicians.
This year, the Legislature passed 964 bills; Schwarzenegger vetoed 214, or 22%, of them.
The book writers claim California would be better off if we had a "hybrid democracy" - the Legislature and the voters working together.
But if the trend toward "direct democracy" continues to grow, will there even be a need for a Legislature in California by the end of the 21st century? |
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