Video Voter Guide to California Ballot Measures

From the Rose Institute:

Students at the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College have released videos providing brief, non-partisan analyses of the twelve propositions on California’s November ballot.

Student teams at the Rose Institute have produced the “Video Voter” series every general election year since 2014.

“These videos are designed to benefit all voters, especially those who are younger and get much of their political information through social media and other online platforms,” said Ken Miller, a Government professor at Claremont McKenna College and Associate Director of the Rose Institute.

“Our students are able to explain California’s complex ballot propositions in a concise, accessible way,” Miller said.

Each video is closed-captioned in both English and Spanish.

In past election cycles, the videos have attracted over 100,000 views online.

This year, the project faced new challenges because the COVID-19 pandemic forced the Claremont campus to close and required the team to collaborate from a distance.

Eight students, hailing from five different states, worked together over the Internet to research, write, film, and produce videos explaining this year’s ballot measures. Instead of campus backdrops, students appear from remote locations, including their apartments or their parents’ homes.

Nathan Tran, a Pomona College sophomore from Tracy, California, said, “We knew it would be harder to complete the project this year, but we were committed to making it happen. The whole team really wanted to help voters understand ballot measures, without partisan spin.”

“This year’s propositions include many issues that students care about, including affirmative action, rent control, voting rights, and the treatment of drivers for companies like Uber and Lyft,” Tran said.

The videos are available on the Rose Institute website, www.roseinstitute.org, as well as on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Campaign Ads in Grocery Deliveries

Ben Christopher at CalMatters:

An extra item may have slipped into your weekly grocery delivery: a campaign ad. It’s a dubious bonus from Instacart, the San Francisco-based tech company that lets customers order groceries by app.

As a valued Instacart customer, we hope you’ll take a moment to learn more about how Prop. 22 supports the best possible shopper experience in California,” read the firm’s email, signed “The Instacart Team.”

California voters are used to being lobbied by corporate behemoths. In props past, the oil industry, Big Pharma, plastic producers and kidney dialysis clinics have spent millions trying to sway voters.

But the gig economy titans bankrolling Proposition 22 — which would allow them to keep treating drivers as independent contractors rather than employees — have a secret weapon: your data profile.

If you’ve ever downloaded the Uber, Lyft, Instacart, Postmates or Doordash apps or registered for their services, the companies possess your phone number, email and credit card info — not to mention your food preferences and travels.

Contact information alone is a goldmine for any election campaign, said Sean McMorris, a policy consultant for transparency watchdog Common Cause. In any other context, “a small nonprofit or the average Joe” behind a campaign would have to shell out thousands of dollars for such a list.

To date Uber, Lyft, Instacart, and Doordash report more than $4.3 million in non-monetary contributions for Prop. 22. That would include email blasts, mass text messaging and within-app campaign material. (As the Los Angeles Times reported, last week Uber customers in California were required to “confirm” a bit of Yes on 22 messaging before hailing their next ride.)

Affirmative Action in Washington State

Scott Jaschik at Insider Higher Ed:

Twenty years ago, Washington State voters put in place the ban [consideration of race in admissions] that the Legislature is now lifting. In Washington State, the Legislature has the power to repeal such referenda; in some other states with bans, the state's voters would need to repeal them. But just as voters once decided the issue, they could do so again. Already critics of affirmative action are organizing a campaign to restore the ban. And campus Republican groups are organizing events to oppose the legislative action to restore the consideration of race in admissions.

A petition seeking to keep the ban on affirmative action says, "I-1000 [the measure passed by the Legislature] can be summed up in one sentence: it would abolish the standard of equality for all, regardless of race, as required by I-200, and replace it with a system that uses different rules for people of different races."

The developments in Washington State come at a time when a lawsuit against Harvard University over affirmative action -- if appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court as expected -- could have an impact on colleges nationwide. Washington State shows that the impact varies in part based on state populations and the competitiveness of public colleges and universities.

Long Ballots and Direct Democracy

Joel Fox writes at Fox and Hounds:

Does a long ballot matter to those supporting some of these measures? The political class thinks so. Remember when Gov. Brown convinced the legislature to move his school funding initiative, which became Proposition 30, to the top of the heap. The rule in place before the legislature changed it positioned the initiatives as they qualified for the ballot. That would have placed the tax measure somewhere down the list of initiatives by the order in which it qualified.

Concern for proponents whose initiatives end up toward the end of a long list of candidates and ballot measures is “decision fatigue.” As defined in an Atlantic Magazine article on ballot positioning, decision fatigue “suggests that as people make several consecutive choices, the quality of their decisions deteriorates” and that it could result in a swing of several percentage points.

According to UC Berkeley’s Ned Augenblick and Scott Nicholson, the chief data scientist at Poynt, Inc. cited in the article, “When we get tired of choosing, we are more likely to want to preserve the status quo, which for state and local propositions means voting no.” The two studied San Diego voting results, figured the difference on a measure being at the bottom of the list of propositions as opposed to near the top could be about 3-percent swing in votes, enough to make a difference on a number of measures.

California Opinion on Direct Democracy

A number of posts have discussed direct democracy.  A recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California casts light on attitudes in the state:

Democratic legislators are also discussing reforms to the 102-year-old citizens’ initiative process. Californians’ strong support for the initiative process is reflected in their perceptions of its overall public policy consequences. About six in 10 adults (57%) and likely voters (60%) say that the public policy decisions made by California voters are probably better than those made by the governor and state legislature. Pluralities across political, regional, racial/ethnic, and other demographic groups hold this view. Similarly positive perceptions have been evident since we began asking this question in 2000.

However, many Californians do find it challenging to make public policy at the ballot box. About seven in 10 adults (70%) and likely voters (67%) say they agree that there are too many propositions on the state ballot. By comparison, 59 percent of adults held this view in September 2008. An even more widely held complaint involves the wording of ballot initiatives. Today, 78 percent of adults and 83 percent of likely voters agree that initiative wording is often too complicated and confusing for voters to understand what would happen if an initiative passed. A similar 78 percent of adults held this view in September 2008. Today, solid majorities across parties, regions, and demographic groups are in agreement that there are too many ballot propositions and that initiative wording is often too confusing.

The influence of special interests, which has been a major area of voter discontent in recent candidate campaigns, is also an issue in initiative campaigns. Most Californians say that the initiative process is controlled a lot (55%) or some (35%) by special interests, and very few say that special interests are not at all in control of the initiative process. Likely voters (63%) are somewhat more likely than all adults to say that special interests have a lot of control of the initiative process today. Partisans hold similarly negative views, with majorities of Democrats (57%), Republicans (65%), and independents (54%) saying a lot. In previous surveys, similar majorities of Californians have said that the initiative process is controlled a lot by special interests (52% Jan 2001, 56% Sep 2005, 54% Sep 2011, 56% Sep 2012, 55% today).

While Californians are generally positive about the initiative system, they also favor changing it. One way to increase public engagement has strong support: Nearly seven in 10 adults (68%) and likely voters (69%) favor an independent citizens’ initiative commission that would hold public hearings and make recommendations in the official voter guide. Democrats (68%), Republicans (65%), and independents (73%) express support, as do solid majorities across regional, racial/ethnic, and demographic groups.

Deliberative Poll and the Initiative Process

At Fox and Hounds, Pete Peterson writes of current proposals for initiative reform in California, citing a 2011 deliberative poll.

PBS taped the proceedings, producing an hour-long documentary of the event. Here’s what the public discussions on initiative reform looked like. Some of the Deliberative Poll’s results should hearten Senator Steinberg and his colleagues as they push reform ideas, but he might tread lightly with others:

Indirect Initiative: Allowing the Legislature to amend an initiative after it has passed subject to the agreement of the initiative’s proponents.
Beginning of “What’s Next California?”: 43% Support vs. 44% Against
By the end of deliberations: 37% Support vs. 51% Against

(Note: While the publicized Steinberg proposal would involve the Legislature prior to ballot placement, on this and other questions, attendees were very skeptical of Legislative engagement in the initiative-writing process.)

Allowing initiative’s supporters to withdraw it after it qualifies for the ballot.

Beginning of “What’s Next California?”: 88% Support vs. 5% Against
By the end of deliberations: 84% Support vs. 9% Against

But a couple of the most popular initiative reforms to this “California in One Room”, do not appear on any slate of the current proposals:

Create a public review process of an initiative after it has been filed with the AG to “clarify the proponents’ intent”. This might look something similar to the Citizens’ Initiative Review currently employed by the State of Oregon, which I reviewed here. This proposal saw the largest positive jump from pre- to post-deliberation:

Beginning of “What’s Next California?”: 60% Support vs. 21% Against
By the end of deliberations: 76% Support vs. 16% Against

(See this post about the Oregon process.)

At the same site, however, Joe Mathews questions the value of the poll results:

You can safely ignore that deliberative poll. It has nothing to say about initiative reform today.

That’s not to say the What’s Next CA poll didn’t have value. It did, as I recounted here back in June 2011. Stanford Professor Jim Fishkin did a terrific job putting it together. There were some fairly clear and informed findings on representation. And there was no ideological bias that I could detect.

But the initiative piece of the polling effort was very weak – the weakest piece of the poll. The information provided about the initiative process was poor, both in quality and quantity, and there were barely 45 minutes in groups for deliberation. And in a panel discussion to inform the deliberation, the panelists often avoided the question in favor of broad, generalized (and somewhat inaccurate) statements about the process.

Unions and a California Ballot Measure

Earlier this year, unions tried to recall Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker over his efforts to limit public-sector collective bargaining.  Now they're fighting a California measure to limit their ability to gather political money.  KCBS-TV reports:

Same-Sex Marriage

Yesterday, the president endorsed same-sex marriage. At Mother Jones, Adam Serwer is critical from a liberal perspective:

But Obama has endorsed marriage equality federalism—not the notion that marriage for gays and lesbians is a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution that can never be taken away. Obama has adopted the same position that Vice President Dick Cheney did in 2004, when Cheney said he believed in marriage equality but that the states should be allowed to decide by a show of hands, as North Carolina did Tuesday, whether gays and lesbians have the same rights as everyone else.

Shortly before the president made his comments, he appeared in New York with Governor Andrew Cuomo.  Politicker reports that Cuomo used a significant phrase:

“I believe in states rights. [emphasis added] I would like to see a place where this law is accepted all across the nation. I advocated as such,” he said. “I don’t know that the solution should be the federal government telling states what to do. I think the American people will get there and I think they are on the road to getting there. And I think it is about communication and understanding. I have evolved on this. I think people when they understand what we are talking about, they reflect on it, then I think you are going to see more and more of this country turning to a place where they support marriage equality."

As our textbook and this blog have noted, liberals once regarded the phrase "states' rights" with suspicion, but the marriage issue has led many of them -- including the president -- to embrace it.

Will the president's change of position help or hurt politically?  On the one hand, public opinion seems to be shifting in favor of same-sex marriage. Gallup reports:

Fifty percent of Americans believe same-sex marriages should be recognized by law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages -- down slightly from 53% last year, but marking only the second time in Gallup's history of tracking this question that at least half of Americans have supported legal same-sex marriage. Forty-eight percent say such marriages should not be legal.

The ballot box provides a different picture, as Rachel Weiner reports at The Washington Post:

Yet 32 times since 1998, voters have gone to the polls and voted against gay marriage.* Thirty-eight states prohibit gay marriage in some fashion. Even in “blue” states like California, Oregon and Delaware, gay marriage bans stand. North Carolina’s Amendment One Tuesday night was just the latest in a long line of failures at the ballot box for proponents of gay marriage. (Support for bans is falling over time, according to HRC: in 2004 they passed on average 71 percent to 29 percent, but in 2008 the average was 57 percent to 43 percent.)

* A ban in Arizona failed in 2006 but a narrower version passed in 2008.

SEE INFOGRAPHIC HERE

Direct Democracy, Deliberation, and Time

An earlier post mentioned the 2010 Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy. Journalist Joe Mathews, co-president of the event, writes:

Our Swiss and German guests were particularly adamant in arguing that California would benefit by adding longer time limits at every stage of the process.

To reduce the importance of money in signature gathering, they suggested extending the current five-month time period for gathering signatures to a year or 18 months, which would give volunteer organizations a chance not only to gather signatures but to win support for their idea, building a coalition of groups that could gather signatures.

They also argued for more time between the qualification of a measure and a vote. Right now, we throw measures that qualify at least five months ahead of time onto the next ballot. In other countries, there's often a year or two between qualification and a vote.

Europeans suggested that providing additional time in California might help blunt the impact of TV ads and money. With more time, initiative sponsors (and opponents) with less in financial resources would have more months and more opportunities to do the basic political work of building coalitions, writing Internet columns and newspaper op-eds as a way to set the stage for the vote at the end.

More time would be especially helpful if Californians were to take the advice of forum visitors and build more public deliberation of initiatives and referendums into their system.

The Entry Fee for Direct Democracy

In our chapter on campaigns and elections, we discuss direct democracy. Although ballot initiatives aim to empower ordinary citizens, such campaigns often require the help of major donors, especially in large states such as California. The Orange County Register reports:

The recent spate of abandoned citizen initiatives underlines a simple fact: If you want to put a measure on the ballot, you're going to have to raise a million bucks to hire signature gathers.

Think you have enough popular support to get 700,000 valid signatures just using volunteers? Say you've got the anti-illegal immigration folks behind you. Or the Tea Party folks. Or the gay community.Forget it. All three factions have thrown up their hands and walked away from drives to get initiatives on the November ballot.

"Nobody ever gets that many signatures with volunteers," said John Matsusaka, president of the Initiative and Referendum Institute at USC. He's studied initiatives since 1991. "I can't recall an initiative ever getting on the ballot in California with volunteers."