This brings up a good point about the issues with Ballot Propositions in general as a method of legislating.

While many states have similar systems, the Ballot Prop system in CA is notorious.

It hasn't always been this way...

(A THREAD BITCHES!) https://twitter.com/adamconover/status/1318295871407128576

For some background, it's important to understand the difference between

1) Direct Democracy

2) Representative Democracy

Direct Democracy is when the people decide directly on what policy or legislation is enacted.

Representative Democracy is when the people elect representatives to make decisions about policy and legislation on their behalf

California, like many places, has a combination of both.

We elect representatives who we hope will make the kinds of policy decisions we want (like State Senators) on our behalf AND we have have Ballot Initiatives/Props that we get to propose ourselves and then vote on

Ballot Initiatives/Props are a form of Direct Democracy, and--generally speaking-- Direct Democracy is good.

It is always most democratic for as many people as possible to have a say in as much as possible.
That's democracy!

But the issue with Ballot Initiatives/Props is NOT that it's

~TOO much Direct Democracy~

it's that, misleadingly, they are much less direct than they appear because access to the kinds of resources needed to put out an initiative and garner support are so unequal

CA adopted Initiatives in 1911 after a push from various interested parties to have more say in the govt (seems fair!).

At the time, the Railroad Companies were bribing state legislators left & right to get what they wanted.

Initiatives were proposed as a way to curb that.

When all your legislators are being paid off by Big Railroad, then giving the people the ability to propose and vote on legislation that Railroad Guys couldn't pay to pass/veto was definitely seen as a good thing that increased democracy

And lots of good things that may have taken way longer to happen DID get passed via Ballot Initiative.

For example, the first major ballot initiative was in 1914 and it abolished the Poll Tax. That's good!

So then what's the problem with Ballot Initiatives? What's wrong with giving more say over what laws get proposed and what laws pass directly to the people?

The issue, as I said above, is not that it is TOO democratic.

The problem is that, when you live in a country with such glaring wealth gaps and where giant corporations hold as much power as they do, then average working class people have a much harder time getting an initiative on the ballot, let alone passed, than these giant corps do

Propositions get on the ballot either by the State Legislator or by regular people collecting a certain amount of signatures in order to petition a placement on the ballot.

Getting those signatures requires lots of time, labor, and resources. Not everyone has those.

Prop 22 is a great (terrible) example. This Proposition is pure anti-worker garbage and the initial support for it was minimal. But it's funded by giant corps like Uber & Lyft who have very deep pockets to spend on collecting signatures and advertising.

In this late-capitalistic techy hellscape, Uber & Lyft even own their own platforms where they can advertise for their proposition as much as they want without any competition.

#NoOnProp22 has an enormous uphill battle to combat all the $ these corps have. That's not democratic

Aside from the finance issue, ballot measures also tend to be much less flexible. In the senate, legislation goes back and forth for negotiation. Constituents can weigh in and say "yes I want XYZ, but not if it hurts XYZ"

Ballot initiatives kinda just are what they are.

Prop 25 is a great example of this. It promises to end cash bail, which is good. But it does so by exchanging it w/ algorithmic risk assessments which is bad.

In a legislature, they could negotiate and say "we ONLY want the good part, not the bad part!"
On a measure you can't.

The other sinister thing about Initiatives (going back to @adamconover's original tweet) is that they can set the majority requirement for amending or overturning them.
So if a bad Prop passes, it can also automatically become impossible to undo or even slightly adjust.

By "adjust" I mean by the legislature. So, for example, if representative legislators want to amend Prop 13, a simple majority vote will not be enough, because in 1978 it was written into Prop 13 that it would require at least 2/3 of legislators to make any amendments

Prop 22 is especially horrible about this.

It requires an unheard-of 7/8 majority. That means, if passed, you'd need a practically unanimous vote from legislators to make even a small change to it.

It makes it untouchable. (Possibly illegally so)

Ballot measures make it hard for legislators in general, actually, because they form these third rails of policy that they have to constantly legislate around.

There's also an argument to be made about how easy it is to mislead the general population vs how easy it is to mislead/sway a legislator.

I'm not sure I entirely agree with this argument, but it's worth taking a look at...

The argument is that regular people are much easier to trick and mislead than legislators are, which makes ballot initiatives shady for taking advantage of that fact.

I disagree w/ the idea that people are easier to mislead, but it is def easier to spread lies in a public ad.

This is especially true if you, like Uber & Lyft, have the resources to constantly bombard people with lies about your Proposition. This ability to saturate media with your messaging to reach people gives you tremendous sway over public opinion. That's not good!

Of course, this isn't to say that representative democracy is the answer either. Supporters of the Ballot Initiative method believe it's one of the only ways to avoid strong lobbying powers who get paid to sway legislators to support policy that helps their interests.

So what's the solution? It probably has way less to do with initiative vs legislature and more to do with what it always comes down to...which is MONEY, BABY

If there was a flat & equal limit to what each campaign could spend that might make the direct democracy more democratic

Also, if we didn't live somewhere with such a glaring wealth divide in the first place then issues like this wouldn't arise so easily. Prop 22 is truly a perfect, vile storm of all the worst parts of capitalism and the initiative process.

Also, fuck lobbyists.