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What Now?

So now that all eight of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's initiatives have been defeated in his special election, what now? What does it all mean?

It's tempting to conclude with absolute certainty that this election proves that California rejects its Governor. After all, though these initiatives were held in what was called the Governor's special election, initiatives don't equal governor. Those who are little more optimistic of the Govenor's gubernatorial future "argue that the landslide defeat was a one-time reaction to an unpopular special election." These optimistic folks, consisting mainly of Schwarzenegger supporters, insist that it's the policy that California rejected, not the person.

Unfortunately, politics is all about policy, and less about the person. Sure, Schwarzenegger got elected based partly on his charm and charisma, but mainly on his personality, his celebrity. But personality and celebrity didn't carry through this time around - which means time for reevaluation.

Could it mean that Schwarzenegger will begin eliminating some of his old advisors? Or, if his public approval rating drops low enough, will he even consider dropping out of the race for reelection next year? Or, might he try compromising and working more cooperatively with the legislature? It's a bit of a no-win situation for Schwarzenegger, because all three of those options mean admitting defeat and alienating someone in the process, whether it's his trusted advisors, the left, or the right.

Stormy times ahead for the Terminator..

The Special Election

We know how the state voted, but how did Berkeley do? According to the Secretary of State’s website, in Alameda County 44.6% was the turnout rate for the 2005 Special Election. Out of 704,036 registered voters in the county, 314,462 voters cast their ballot.

Specifically, Alameda County tended to be consistent with the statewide vote. On Proposition 73 (Minor’s Pregnancy) Alameda County (AC) voted 69.3% NO and the state of California (SC) voted 52.6% NO. On Proposition 74 (teacher tenure) AC voted 72.1% NO and SC voted 55.0% NO. On Proposition 75 (union dues) AC voted 70.4% NO and SC voted 53.4% NO. On Proposition 76 (State spending) AC voted 79.5% NO and SC voted 62.0% NO. On Proposition 77 (redistricting) AC voted 74.0% NO and SC voted 59.5% NO. On Proposition 78 (drug discounts) AC voted 68.1% NO and SC voted 58.5% NO. On Proposition 79 (drug rebates) AC voted 52.5% NO and SC voted 61.1% NO. On Proposition 80 (electricity regulation) AC voted 60.7% NO and SC voted 65.7% NO.

The Special Election- Alameda County was with the masses, and the masses trampled Arnold…

Two Cents: The Initiative Process of C.A. = too cool for school

For the past few weeks, us Initiative Madness Bloggeroos have been studying the California initiative process as it relates to Tuesday’s special election. We’ve tried to make sense of some of the initiatives and even began to look into the process of getting an initiative passed. We’ve spent hours painstakingly analyzing every aspect of the eight propositions on the 2005 special election ballot.

So what did I come away with after all of it? Well, on top of the replenished zeal for democracy (Woo!), I discovered that the initiative process of California is nowhere close to being the noble, power-to-the-people process that most believe.

The harsh realities of advertising costs, legal fees, consulting fees, bribes, drug money, etc. soon put a stop to my dreams of a truly grassroots initiative. Our class spoke to a lawyer representing a firm that specializes in initiatives for Democrats and their allies. She estimated that we would need multiple millions of dollars just to get our feet in the door. Signature gatherers would leech the first couple million dollars. The lawyers would get a sizable compensation, followed by a slew of political advisors, advertisement firms, and focus groups. It’s no wonder that initiative campaign websites look like crap.

With my dreams of a noble, grassroots initiative that would bring affordable public transportation to everyone and at the same time save the environment thoroughly crushed, I almost didn’t feel as if I could go on. The disappointment was getting to be too much to bear when I remembered that soon, I would be given the power to change the course of history. On November 8, 2005, I would be able to vote and apply my newfound knowledge of the initiatives to have a say in our government. The right to participate in the democratic process is truly an amazing one. I hope you, the readers of Initiative Madness, will too take part in this wonderful and integral part of our country’s foundations.

Is there such a thing as grass roots anymore?

The American Civil Rights Movement, now that was grass roots! Common people coming together to fight for something they truly believe in, using any means possible. Sound familiar? It should, but for some of us who are too young to remember the time when picket signs and letters to your congressman actual accomplished something, the idea of a grass root movement is foreign. Politics has always been a rich man's game and in the year 2005 in the liberal state of California this remains true.

As a Californian I feel I have been abused by the Government during the special election campaign. In the past few months I have been lied to, harassed by campaigners and advertisements, and befuddled by the legal jargon of the initiatives. More importantly, I was robbed by the Governor himself, who decided to call this special election which, according to comcast.com, costs somewhere between 52-55 million dollars. I am outraged! I guess I will just create my own initiative, to call for the end of all special elections.

Oh wait. I can't. Despite the "user friendly," initiative process I lack the millions of dollars that creating my own initiative would require. Last Tuesday, exactly a week before the special election, I along with the rest of the initiative madness bloggers, decided to see just how hard it would be to create an initiative of our own. We spoke with an expert attorney who made it clear that it would be impossible to pass an initiative ourselves. We would need lawyers, political consultants, a campaign committee, signature collectors and most importantly money. It came down to one simple question: "How much were we willing to spend to buy a law?"

How will the madness of the last few months end? In a complete upset or victory for the Governor? According to an article in this Monday's LA Times, Schwarzenegger's opposition has been mobilizing, hitting the streets and rallying support for the cause. Hold on, that sounds characteristic of a grass roots movement. True, many of the people gathering support for or against the initiatives are employed in that faculty, but there is a minority who chose to campaign during this special election because it is something they believe in. So, despite the monetary corruption of the initiative process elements of grass roots still remain.

It's all about the Moooo-lah

Well-known professor Bruce Cain may consider California's initiative process "user friendly," but he never told us who the "user" is. After talking to an attorney whose firm handles initiatives for Democratic clients, it was extremely clear that the CA intiative process is only "user friendly" if the user has at least couple of million dollars to drop. At least.
A break down of the money flow for pushing through an initiative is striking. Consultation with a kind-hearted lawyer who believes in your cause rings up the hefty price of $300-350/hour, a bargian, because many people charage as much as $500. And that "bargain" would only come up if the proposed initiative is convincingly beneficial and "good." And let's never forget: you also have to convince the lawyer that it wouldn't conflict with the firms other major clients.
Legal consultation aside, here's where the money would be shoveled: According to the CA Secretary of State's office, initiative petitions must be signed by registered voters and the number of signatures must be at least 5% of the total votes cast for the last gubernatorial election. The number of signatures required for initiative statues for circulation before the November 2006 gubernatorial election, is 373,816.
Amending the Constitution, however, requires more signatures. Petitions for initiative constitutional amendments must also be signed by registered voters, but instead of just 5%, there must be at east 8% o the totalvotes cast for Governor at the last gubernatorial election. For circulation before the November 2006 gubernatorial election, that comes to 598,105.
These signatures don't come cheap. Our expert noted that signature gatherers typically charge $1-2 per signature, although more controversial initiatives cause the cost to hike up. In addition, since only about 70% of signatures are even valid, it's much safer to over-gather than to just stick to the number of signatures required. Just gathering signatures charges a million dollars to a bank account.
Since signature gatherers charge so much, the obvious thing to do would be to assemble a group of volunteers. However, our legal eagle shoots down that suggestion quickly, "I can't even remember the last intitiative that qualified with volunteer initiatives. There are all kinds of rules about who can circulate a volunteer petition. The problem with volunteers is that you have to make sure that your volunteers are qualified and make sure that volunteers know all the rules. I think that you are unrealistic to think that you can save very much money. There's no way that you can get around that intitial cost."
If we solely focus on legal consultation charges and signature gathering, we're already topping a million dollars. Numbers like these don't come easy for most people.
While the initiative process may be "user friendly" for those with money, it leaves people sorely lacking -- grassroot elements, concepts and progress are left behind.
Since it's my last blog of the semester, I just want to leave readers with this last question: how can we help the initiative process in CA return to its roots?

Equal Opportunity...Or Not?

Given that Governor Schwarzenegger had spent over $26 million on the California Special election by August of this year, it seems obvious that by November 8, this number will have reached well over $50 million. Even after having learned the price behind the propositions currently at issue, the Iniative Bloggers retained a grain of hope that an idealized grassroots iniative would be possible to create. The reasoning behind such a process is that hypothetically, anyone in California's hyper-democratically oriented society with a realistic and beneficial vision for governmental reform should be able to propose that vision to the general public. Unfortunately, as it turns out, the only "anyone's" who can indeed exercise this right, are those with not only great ideas, but also very deep pockets.

The voice of reason and harsh reality in the case of the quest forged by the Iniative Bloggers was an attorney whose firm handles lots of initiatives for groups pursuing primarily local iniatives. A phone call aimed at consulting her extensive expertise laid out the tedious and very, very expensive steps behind launching a "grassroots" ballot measure. The particular ballot measure that the Iniative Bloggers had in mind adddressed environmentally-friendly California public transportation, its increased institution ot be exact. To many, this would seem fairly straightforward and an attempt at contributing to the general public. To the system, however, this is much, much more complex and, of course, costly.

To break it down, on top of the lawyer's own services (consultation alone running at about $350 per hour for tender hearted practitioners and more like $500 per hour in most firms) propositions require the additional expertise of: signature gatherers (1.1 signatures to be gathered in order to guarantee 800,000 valid signatures, each signature running one to two dollars resulting in at least one million dollars), a political consultant (mandatory and running rates of an absolute minimum of "several thousand dollars"), an advertising/publicity representative (necessary for any proposition's success, and "probably the most expensive component"), and a treasurer (actually mandated by the law and "very, very expensive" to say the least). In order for this iniative to be at all plausible, it must have a proposal for the way in which it will be funded. The options for such funding are a bond, a tax, or a way of redirecting some already-existing portion of the budget toward this new measure. In every case, some resistant response is sure to be triggered in some opposing party, and in order to determine the least offensive and therefore most strongly supported form of funding, it will probably require the consultation fees of economists and/or other experts in such areas. No matter which funding option is decided on, this large scope and great change would require to an amendment to the state Constitution, also known as a very ambitious feat. The grand total? Probably somewhere between three to five million dollars. How's that for an equal opportunity?

California is known to be one of the most democratic states in the nation and for its "power to the people" motto. Even Bruce Cain, Director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley, argued that the California initiative process is very "user friendly." However through consulting a lawyer about the facts of the initiative process, I have discovered that it is only "user friendly" to the wealthy user who has patience to deal with the long, complicated process.

Eager to get a hands on experience of the initiative process, the bloggers of Professor Rasky's class, made a mock initiative. The initiative was about an environmentally, safe transportation system. When we called a lawyer to discuss the possibility and process to pass this initiative, I realized just how costly and time consuming the initiative process is. For starters this lawyer, in real life, would charge a hefty $300-350 per hour. In addition to a lawyer, we would need focus groups (which would cost thousands of dollars), political consultants (which are even more expensive than lawyers), a campaign committee (with a treasurer and someone who knows the laws), and signature gathers (who charge $1-2 per signature). According to the lawyer we would a total of 1.1 million signatures. When we asked about volunteer signature gathers, the lawyer laughed and explained that volunteer signatures have not been used in a while because of the strict rules. Therefore, just to gather signatures, it could cost anywhere between 1.1 – 2.1 millions dollars.

It is not only the initiative process itself that is unfriendly, but also the process of voting. Many citizens find it hard to register. In addition, registered voters have a hard time getting to their precinct before or after work or school, making the voter turnout even less than the percent registered. According to the Secretary of State website, about 70% are registered to vote in California. A Mercury News article by Aaron C. Davis reports, "Historically voter turnout in California's special elections has ranged between 36 and 47 percent, although more than 61 percent of registered voters turned out for the recall election in 2003." Even if most citizens do not have the money to initiate a proposition, all citizens at least have the chance to vote, which most do not take the advantage of. Ironically, as amendments have been made to broaden the opportunities for people to vote, the voter turnout rate has steadily decreased.

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!

In the Hands of the Elite

As many of the Initiative Madness bloggers have established in the past few entries, California's initiative system is not all that user-friendly. It's complex, convoluted, and, most importantly and disillusioningly, it's costly.

In conclusion, California's initiative system, intended as a means for the common person to reach out and shape state politics without the influence of the professionals and politicians that make up the elite of our state, is a myth. From our experience endeavoring to initiate an initiative ourselves, I've learned that California's initiative process is not in the hands of the people. And if we don't have control over even that democratic function, then that makes California an elite-run state - we're just here to vote for the elite with their elite ideas.

Which brings me to another conclusion: why maintain this initiative system anyways? Not only is it not a true people-driven process, it's also kind of a screwed up one. Sure, it's the elite running the whole thing, but it's not the political elite who at least understand what goes around California. These are the rich white guys who happen to have a few bucks lying around to donate to their favorite cause. Rich does not necessarily equal politically savvy. In fact, as California history has shown, the initiatives that do get passed aren't guaranteed to have the most stable, sound implications for California. For example, Prop 13 eliminated the property tax, which was fine and dandy, until California realized that its schools would get severely short-changed in the process. Those sorts of negative consequences aren't always forseen with the initiative process, and so those sorts of consequences aren't always anticipated when these initiatives get drafted to begin with.

So what we have is incomplete legislation getting passed into law with both good and bad implications for California. It's not legislation we have a say in creating; even if we like the general idea, we can't do much about specific sections we don't like aside from voting down the initiative altogether or trying to start up another one to counteract the aforementioned initiative.

With all of the negative aspects of this process, why do Californians insist on maintaining the initiative process? I think the answer still lies with what Bruce Cain said back in October. Cain may have been slightly erroneous in his statement that California's initiative process is a "user-friendly" one but he was right when he also asserted that the initiative process is still here because people trust their own judgment. However twisted and inaccurate it may be that we see equate our judgment with the rich, the fact remains that we do - and we're still voting this November 8.

Rich People vs. Regular People User Friendly

As you all know, the Journalism 24 bloggers recently listened to Bruce Cain, a respected political scientist, speak about the special election. During his speech, Bruce Cain made a statement that “the California initiative system is user friendly.” But is this really true? After Tuesday’s class it didn’t seem like it.

We decided to test the system ourselves. We brainstormed, gathered ideas, and finally put them together into our very own initiative. Then we called a lawyer for expert advice. We wanted to know what it would take and how much it would cost to pass an initiative.

The first thing you need to do is pay a lawyer to draft the initiative. Since we had an idea our lawyer was sympathetic to, the charges would about $350 an hour. That's greatly discounted compared to other lawyers’ rates. Regular lawyers may charge up to $500 an hour. Lawyers can take a few weeks or even a few months to finish drafting. Next you need signatures. 373,816 signatures are required to pass an initiative, but 598,105 signatures are required to pass an initiative that amends or changes the constitution. In order to get those signatures, people usually hire professional signature gatherers. However, they have only a 70% validity rate and charge about $2 per signature. You can try to save money by getting volunteer signature gatherers, but they tend to have an even lower validity rate. Thus, passing the initiative already costs more than one million dollars. However, it doesn’t stop here. You also need a political consultant (which costs much more than a lawyer), a focus group (which costs tens of thousands), and a campaign committee with a treasurer who knows the state law. And don’t forget you have to pay for advertising! People do not exaggerate when they say advertising costs A LOT. Even without adding all of this up, you can see that just putting an initiative on the ballot costs millions. Putting an initiative on the ballot doesn’t guarantee it will pass. I doubt anyone has a few millions lying around to just spend or play with. It is true that the California initiative system is user friendly, but it is “rich people user friendly,” not “regular people user friendly.”

Our Initiative

As Initiative Madness blogger Amy said, we at Initiative Madness are working on a way to fix the pathetic transportation system in California. We would like to propose an initiative that will make public transportation in urban areas more available as well as to make transportation more environmentally friendly. Who wouldn’t want an initiative like this?
According to the lawyer we consulted, our initiative was likely to rub the wrong way with the California Teachers Association (CTA). As can be seen with their fight against Arnold and Proposition 74, CTA is one union that we don’t want against us! The lawyer explained that the CTA wouldn’t have objection to the positive environmental intentions of our initiative, but rather because of a little-known-phenomenon called $money$! Proposition 98, passed in 1988 “establishes a minimum funding level or guarantee for K-12 education and community colleges” (California Budget Project). Thus, if we were to fund our public transportation initiative with money from taxes, we would be upsetting the teachers’ initiative.
Our expert suggested that we research previous initiatives that focus on the same themes we are trying to incorporate in our initiative and to work with groups from those initiatives to get our measure passed. For example, we might want to consider the “EMERGENCY RESERVE. DEDICATION OF CERTAIN TAXES TO TRANSPORTATION. APPROPRIATION LIMIT CHANGE. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT” (HLL) of 1987. Because this initiative is very much like our own, especially in regards to where the money would come from, it would be very beneficial to our efforts to not only come in contact with the introducing group of this initiative, but also to find out where this initiative went wrong.
However, considering what Initiative Madness blogger Jared said about the costs of our hypothetical “grassroots initiative” I think it’ll take a lot more than this…

User Friendly*

Bruce Cain, Director of Cal Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies, argued in a speech to the Journalism School that California’s initiative process is much more “user friendly” than other states’. This being said, what type of user is it friendly to?

In short, the well-wishing citizen who tries to make a contribution to the state of California by passing an initiative will need to fork out at least 3 million dollars if they would like their proposal to have a shot at becoming law.

Clearly, the type of user that California’s system is friendly to is not Jack, the determined and optimistic middle school teacher. However, as the expert lawyer we consulted seemed to make clear, developing an initiative is expensive, but it’s pretty much just a formula. After hiring the attorney, political consultant, signature gatherers and focus group members, there are simply a number of questions that must be answered, and all the people you have working for you will churn out the rest. Where will the funding come from? If your initiative fails, would you mind only the acceptable parts turning into law?

California’s initiative process is clearly not friendly to the average citizen with a good idea, but the wealthy one who believes that turning their idea into law is worth several million dollars is in luck.

*This applies to those who believe that their initiative is worth about five million dollars

According to Tom Abate of the San Francisco Chronicle, California has the lowest bond rating of the 50 states despite being one of the world’s largest economies. California has long faced the problem of spending while not raising enough revenue. Within 5 years, the sate deficit has more than doubled from $26 billion to $54 billion. Ever since the cap on property tax (Proposition 13) passed, the state has relied heavily on sales and income tax. The problem California faces is either to cut spending or to raise taxes, but neither side can come to a consensus. California requires a two-thirds majority to approve a budget and the same two-thirds to raise taxes. This issue is a major obstacle in the initiative we are trying to launch.

The Initiative Madness Bloggers have decided to start our own initiative. We want to fund public transportation in major cities while being environmentally friendly and energy efficient. The idea behind this initiative is to provide an alternative to driving and spare the environment. We realize that this is a huge task to take on but someone has to do it. The way the transportation measure would be funded will be through bonds, a portion of the state budget, or maybe even taxes. However, from past surveys of the Californian population, none of these ways is popular.

According to a June 2005 survey from the Public Policy Institute of California, transportation only receives 3% of the State General Obligation Infrastructure Bonds. While other propositions have tried to earmark money for funding transportation (such as Proposition 42), the money has yet to be directed toward transportation, due to the state’s current budget crisis. So it is unsure whether funding for this measure can happen.

In another July 2004 PPIC survey of the environment, Californians are very much aware of the increasing problems in the environment. Air pollution ranks the highest with 26% in the top environmental problems California faces. The survey states that 75% of Californians support tougher air pollution regulation laws and 56% would be willing to pay a higher price for a vehicle if it benefited the environment. Despite these findings, California still rejected Proposition 51 which allow “thirty percent of the General Fund revenues generated from the sales tax on the lease and sale of motor vehicles to be used only for state and local transportation-related purposes.”

In trying to save our environment and to increase public transportation, we are looking to spend several million dollars to try to pass an initiative. Is clean air and public transit worth the cost? We sure think so.