So I was looking at the sampleballotsin my county for tomorrow’s election, and after all the actual primary elections, there are a series of propositions that are Yes/No type things.
And they’re all hot garbage, regardless of party. Not because they’re necessarily bad ideas, but because they’re weirdly written and preaching to the choir with the most absurdly safe ideas from either side of the aisle.
I’m still trying to figure out what restating your core values to your primary voters for voting purposes accomplishes? I mean, is it some kind of vote on whether or not the party wants these things after all, or is it meant to add some sort of lame legitimacy to these things because X number of primary voters voted for them? To me, they seem like total slam-dunks for primary voters- as in, if you’re motivated enough to vote in a primary, you’re going to also toe the party line on these ideas as well.
That’s not how it works in California. We have propositions on the primary ballot too, but they are nonpartisan. The same propositions appear to voters of all parties. This year they involve a school construction bond, plus some local measures.
I’m not sure that example jibes with what you said. There are a lot of people–mostly Republicans, in my experience–who don’t want people who can’t afford it to get out on bail.
As someone who comes from a place where this does not happen can somebody in the know explain what the effect of this is?
If Proposition 13 ‘Everyone will wear a hat made from cheese, or vegan equivalent’ won a majority of votes in the primary does that bind anyone? Does it become policy of the incoming winners, of the nominating party or the state? Or is it temperature-taking only, indicative of increased desire for dairy millinery, and that in the fullness of time government may do some pro-cheese-hat law-making?
Given your low voting rates does anything proposed in this manner mean more than the OP suggests, predictable asserting by people with a bee in their bonnet?
It varies state by state, and may vary proposition by proposition. The “strongest” ones actually make a new state law directly, that takes effect the same way it would if the state legislature passed it (there are no nation-level propositions). If that new law conflicts with current laws, or the state constitution, or the federal constitution, then courts can (and do) strike them down. Some state legislatures have mechanisms like “the state legislature can overturn a proposition on a 2/3 vote” or similar.
And it can get into messes - it’s quite possible to have “spend more on education” and “cut taxes” bills to pass independently in the same batch and then the cognitive dissonance sets in while the legislature has to sort out the mess.
Particularly controversial ones can increase voting rate, as they can get enough press that people come out to vote on them when they might not be bothered to vote for their legislators.
In California, if the voters pass your cheesy Proposition 13, it immediately becomes binding law. The legislature can’t even repeal or modify it. The only way to repeal it would be to place another proposition on the ballot during a future election. To understand why you have to understand the history of how California’s proposition system came into existence. IIRC, in the early 20th Century the people of California felt the state legislature was basically in the pocket of railroad company executives. As one of many populist reforms during that era, they were able to amend the state constitution to create this proposition system we have today (the exact means as to how they were able to get the amendment passed, I don’t know). Since the entire point was to limit the power of the legislature, allowing them to make changes to any of these propositions once they’d passed would defeat the purpose. At least that’s how I understand how it originated. But I didn’t go to school in California; someone who did probably would have learned more about it. I probably picked up what I know from the local public radio station.
As an aside, this has a lot to do with why California’s budgeting process is so contentious. Much of the state’s revenue is required by various propositions to be spent on specific things, completely outside the legislature’s control. That leaves a relatively small part of the state’s budget that’s truly discretionary, leading to much fighting over what it should be spent on.
A California proposition on primary or general election ballots is the people’s tool to amend the state constitution, which is now a rather complicated [del]mess[/del] document. I’m not sure if measures can be placed on special-election ballots too. But California constitution experts may need to re-educate themselves every few months. And yes, when a measure passes, it’s effective immediately. Go elsewhere for your goose liver paté.
Around here, the politicos “game” it by choosing which election to put a ballot proposition on. The demographics are different for different types of elections.
One extreme stupidity last year: the local yokels, to appease one group, okayed a ballot proposition that they didn’t really want to pass. So they held a special election for it just weeks away from a regular election, costing $ and all that. Why? The people who turn out for this type of special election tend to vote “No”. Which they did.
I misread it- I’m curious now to find out what the results will be, as the Democrat district attorneys in the larger cities have been spearheading bail reform, not the GOP types. But it’s hard to argue with the question as worded, so that’s interesting.
But **GreysonCarlisle **answered my question- they are basically opinion polls.
Yup, just an opinion poll in TX, often used by interest groups to further a point. Same as in Illinois. ‘Should marijuana be legal and the tax money given to everyone to have a unicorn?’
They’re different in other places where they have the force of law, but those are usually on the November ballot.
The idea is, if you’re going to go to the trouble of having an election anyway, might as well get all of your electioning out of the way at once. So you’ll get your partisan primaries, and you’ll also get whatever your state does in the way of propositions, too.
Around here, propositions are binding, and are generally timed based on whether their proponents think they’ll do better with low turnout or high turnout. If they think low turnout favors them, they’ll attach it to a primary or special election or the like, and if they think high turnout favors them, they’ll attach it to a general election, preferably in a Presidential (or at least senatorial) year.
They had an election a couple years ago in Feb around here where there was only one thing on the ballot. That thing was whether to expand the local fire district to include a certain area. Now this is not normal and lots of people were wondering why they just didn’t put it on the primary in May. It was really a waste of money to have an election just for that. Not only that, but the fire district would have to pay all the costs of that special election. It didn’t make sense.
The explanation I was told was that it was due to the fiscal year of the fire district, which began on the first of April. And if they could get the new area added before the fiscal year started, they could collect taxes for that year. If they waited until May, they couldn’t collect them until the next year. Since they’d collect more taxes than the election cost, it was worth it to have the special election.
I recall a year with primary, general, and several special elections for state and local issues. I exercised my franchise so much, I damn near wore it out! Has anyone else here nearly exhausted their voting strength?