That Flurry of Ballot Questions, NY Times 11/5/05 - NY Laughing at Calif

Government by referendum should come with a warning: vote yes at your own risk. Measures placed on the ballot by citizen initiatives are by their nature missing the devil of the details. The questions are designed to be brief, often to the point of being misleading or confusing. When the list is interminable, as it is in some states this year, the overwhelmed voter might be best advised to just say no.

It's a wonder that in California, there hasn't been a proposition against propositions. The poor voters are wrestling with eight questions, thanks to their action-loving governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who scheduled a special election to push through his own pet propositions. Other special interests followed once he had opened the door. Most of the questions involve matters that should be handled by the State Legislature. Voters are being asked, for instance, to choose between two different initiatives on prescription drugs, one sponsored by consumer groups and the other by drug companies, and both fatally flawed.

If Mr. Schwarzenegger thinks that the Legislature has failed to do the right thing when it comes to budgetary matters or teachers' tenure in the public schools, he should be out campaigning for different lawmakers, not asking the public to do their work during a quick trip to the polls. The problem, of course, is that districts are so carefully gerrymandered that they make almost every incumbent invulnerable to public pressure. The one proposition California voters should consider involves the one thing the legislators can never be expected to do for themselves: taking redistricting out of the hands of party power brokers and putting it into the hands of a nonpartisan commission.

The editorial notes the phenomena of initiatives aimed at curbing the rights of homosexuals.
-In Maine, where the State Legislature recently expanded discrimination laws to include protections for homosexuals in housing, education and other areas, voters are being asked to exercise a so-called people's veto to reverse that law.
- In Texas, meanwhile, voters are being asked to approve an amendment cementing the current law against same-sex marriage into the State Constitution.