Primary issues

On the Presidential primary ballot next month (or right now, for those voting absentee) are seven statewide measures, Propositions 91 through 97. When we ponder how to vote on ballot measures, we try to seek the primary issues. That can be tough, though, because generally we get to vote only on a narrow question – some modification to some government program already in operation. We don’t, as voters, often get the chance to express our opinion on fundamental policy.
Perhaps that’s due simply to the complexity of modern government, expanded as it has into areas of our lives unimagined when the nation was founded. There are 1,322 words in the Declaration of Independence. We could easily publish the Constitution of the United States, including amendments, on five pages of the Sun. Yet California government codes come in sets of 284 bound volumes, filling almost 50 feet of shelf space, and they are dwarfed by the sheer mass of federal regulations.
We’re glad to live in California, where voter “initiative” measures may be put forth by any citizen willing and able to collect enough signatures. Nevertheless, the occasions seem all too rare when voters can truly voice their opinions at a fundamental level.
Proposition 13 was one such occasion, when in 1978 California voters rebelled against high property taxes feeding the state bureaucracy. Little did we know that it would, ironically, worsen the situation by centralizing in Sacramento many elements of government, such as funding of our public schools. Term limits in 1990 was another such issue, as was English as the primary language of public education in 1998, and as the government’s definition of “marriage” will be this November, if proponents for any of the half-dozen initiatives collect enough signatures in time.
The first three of the measures on our ballots now are voter initiatives, and here’s how we see them:
91 – Transportation Funding. Vote No. Whatever the measure would do, and it’s technical, when even its proponents are now asking voters to turn it down, that’s probably a good idea.
92 – Community College Fees and Funding. Vote No. This measure writes new funding requirements into the state constitution but does not provide a funding source. Since state revenues are now insufficient to cover existing programs, it seems pointless to create new ones, however worthy the intent.
93 – Term Limits. Vote No. Generally, we like term limits, intended to check the power of the political class, whose careers are spent in government. The ideal of a private citizen serving for a few years, and then returning to business or professional life, remains attractive. This measure, though, actually undermines the term limits that California voters approved earlier; passage would allow a few powerful state legislators, who would soon be “termed out,” to remain in office yet another term. Bad idea.
94, 95, 96, 97 – Indian Gaming. These last four measures are identical amendments to the existing “Indian gaming compacts” with four different “tribes,” increasing the number of slot machines allowed. We’ve chuckled at the constant television advertising for and against, paid for, respectively, by the operators of the casinos who would get the expansion and by the operators of competing gambling outlets. Talk about special interests! We’re not so sure the casinos were a good idea in the first place, so we’re encouraging a No vote.
And for President … we’ll leave that one alone! As your local newspaper, we prefer to focus on local candidacies, where party politics matter only peripherally, if at all. So no, we’re not going to weigh in on the hot topic of Hillary and Obama, whose competition has been good theater, at least. We do wonder, though, why the articulate Alan Keyes continues to be shunned by Republican party officials.
However you decide to vote, please make sure you do. It’s a right that should not be taken for granted.