With the California Financial Crisis at stake, the impartiality of the California Attorney General has come under scrutiny.
Proponents of the California Democracy Act, a ballot initiative that would restore a majority vote for revenue and budget in the legislature, are asking Jerry Brown, the Attorney General, for a new title and summary. An exhaustive poll has shown that Brown's title and summary changed the meaning and intent of the proposed initiative by one of the largest margins ever seen in a poll.
The poll was conducted by David Binder Research, one of California's most respected polling firms. The poll showed that the actual initiative for majority on revenue and budget is supported by likely California voters by a 73-to-22 percent margin -- a 51 percent lead. But Attorney General Jerry Brown personally wrote the title and summary with wording that shifts that favorable margin to a 38-to-56 percent unfavorable margin -- a 69 percent shift!
The poll was conducted March 6-11, with a random sample of 800 likely voters with a margin of error of ±3.5 percent. The summary appears on www.CaliforniansforDemocracy.com.
If unchanged, Brown's wording, not the actual initiative, would appear on the ballot, leading voters to misinterpret it and vote against it. Brown's wording, if not changed, could kill the initiative, despite overwhelming voter support.
The effect is crucial, since the lack of majority rule in the legislature has made it impossible for the legislature to raise the revenue the state needs to prevent financial meltdown. It is the single biggest factor in the state's budget crisis.
The California Democracy Act is one sentence long.
All legislative actions on revenue and budget must be determined by a majority vote.
Its intent is "to bring democracy to the California legislature by ensuring that all legislative actions on revenue and budget must be determined by a majority vote. The current 2/3 vote requirement for revenue and budget allows 33.4% of either the Assembly or Senate to block the will of the majority, which violates an essential tenet of democracy." The issue is democracy. And on an initiative, a simple majority can end the 2/3 vote rules.
Attorney General Brown's rewording states:
Changes Legislative Vote Requirement to Pass a Budget or Raise Taxes from Two-Thirds to a Simple Majority. Initiative Constitutional Amendment.
It changes the legislative vote requirement necessary to pass the budget, and to raise taxes from two-thirds to a simple majority. Unknown fiscal impact from lowering the legislative vote requirement for spending and tax increases. In some cases, the content of the annual state budget could change and / or state tax revenues could increase. Fiscal impact would depend on the composition and actions of future legislatures.
The Attorney General's wording uses the word "taxes" four times, associated with the words "raise" and "increase." It includes the conservative language "spending and tax increases," usually used to vilify liberals. His title and summary raises voters' fears that their taxes could be raised. It replaces the intent of the initiative to promote democracy via majority vote by a purported but untrue intent to raise taxes on individual voters.
The Binder report notes that taxes in general, as opposed to their taxes, are not a real concern of most voters. Democrats are overwhelmingly opposed to raising taxes on lower and middle income Californians, as are Republicans. No one in the legislature wants to raise taxes on most voters.
When taxes on the lower and middle income brackets are not at issue, 64 percent of voters support "solving the budget crisis by closing tax loopholes on corporations and charging oil companies an extraction fee without raising taxes on lower and middle income Californians." 55% agree with the statement that "we could raise revenue and balance the budget without raising taxes on lower and middle income Californians." Tax experts, such as Jean Ross of the Californian Budget project and Lenny Goldberg of the California Tax Reform Association agree.
Some moderate and liberal opponents of the Democracy Act believe that the right will attack it as raising taxes nonetheless, and that is no doubt true. Usually such attacks would lower support for an initiative by about 10 percent. The Binder poll took this into account by providing a battery of such attacks and then testing support again. The predicated effect occurred. Support for the original wording dropped from 73-to-22 percent down to 62-to-34 percent, still a 28 percent margin.
In short, the Attorney General's wording raises unrealistic fears in a majority of voters that their taxes might be raised and hides the true democratic intent of the original initiative. That is why proponents of the California Democracy Act are asking for an accurate title and summary from the Attorney General that reflects the democratic intent of the initiative and does not raise unrealistic fears of most voters that their taxes might be raised via the initiative.
Indeed, voters show overwhelming support for such basic democracy. As Binder observes, 71% of voters agree with the statement that "in a democracy, a majority of legislators should be able to pass everyday legislation." And 68% of voters disagree with the statement that "in a democracy, a minority of legislators should be able to block everyday legislation." Percentages this high reflect support from across the political spectrum.
Since everyday legislation requires revenue, a majority vote requirement for both revenue and budget would realize the aspirations of an overwhelming percentage of voters for democracy in their legislature. And it would allow the legislature to pass legislation that would end the budget crisis.
I ask you to write to Attorney General Brownat initiative.coordinator@doj.ca.gov asking him to provide a title and summary of the resubmitted California Democracy Act according to its actual intent as follows: Ensures that all legislative actions on revenue and budget must be determined by a majority vote, and ends the ability of a minority of legislators to block the will of the majority on such legislation.
The Attorney General ought not to be acting against the overwhelming yearning for democracy on the part of voters across the political spectrum, as well as their deep desire to end the state's budget crisis.
The author is Professor of Linguistics at UC Berkeley, one of the world's most renowned linguists and one of the country's leading experts on the use of language in politics. He is the author of the California Democracy Act.
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Dear AG Brown -
Please provide a title and summary of the resubmitted California Democracy Act according to its actual intent as follows:
"Ensures that all legislative actions on revenue and budget must be determined by a majority vote, and ends the ability of a minority of legislators to block the will of the majority on such legislation."
As a former English teacher, I'd have to mark down your rewrite of the initiative title and summary for unnecessary obfuscation.
Let the people determine the worthiness of the initiative based on an accurate description of it, not a description weighed down with loaded language and code words.
Thank you -
Michael Heister
The initiative should read "Restores the ability of the majority of people to attempt to steal from a minority". The attempt actually fails, but the legislature sure gets what it wants. Your money.
The taking of citizen's money should only be done if absolutely necessary. Taking more should require at least 67%. Taking less should require 33%.
Plus California's issue isn't revenue, it's spending.
Alexander Hamilton had it right over 200 years ago when he wrote that. No republic can survive that requires super-majorities for conducting normal business which would include passing a budget and raising the revenue to fund that budget. It is a prescription for paralysis and ineffective government. We have seen it in California and in the U.S. Senate.
The right always likes to make reference to the Constitution, but the very existence of that constitution shows that the founders of this country believed in government. They would not have written the Constitution if they didn't. It also shows that they believed in majority rule since the things in the Constitution requiring a super-majority are extremely limited.
1) no instate tuition to illegals
2) an end to pay and benefits to civil servants that exceed the avg for taxpayers in the state
3) all illegals will be sent home immediately.
The vote would be 80% in favor and the balance against. Think we'll ever see a bill that actually is something the voters want??
"Okay - reality check here. As a California voter (absentee), I have been barraged by countless state initiatives my whole voting life. Most of these are concocted by special interest groups trying to game the system. The worst was Prop. 13 of the 70's, which is the major reason California is bankrupt. The major similarity between all of these initiatives? They pretend to say in simple language one thing, when the ramifications are usually something quite different.
So for George Lakoff, who by the way is the author of this initiative, to pretend that Jerry Brown is undemocratic is purest piffle. Brown has a responsibility to judge the worthiness of the proposed act. If he has an honest disagreement over the actual effect of the wording, however simple on the surface, then he must by law share that concern with us, and for Lakoff to pretend that Brown is somehow being undemocratic is unworthy of both him and his university chair.
The shame is that this is actually intended to reverse the damage done by Prop.13. Lakoff would get more support from thinking libs like me if he didn't descend to ad hominem attacks like this one."
Majority vote? Majority of what? Is this saying that ballot proposals won't pass with 49% yes, 48% no, and 3% blank? No, this is about the legislature. Well, what's the current procedure? Are we making it harder by saying that voting "present" will count as a no? Or do they now have a plurality vote to choose from some set of options? No, we're making it easier, because it currently takes a supermajority.
The one-sentence version provides no answers, just sweet-sounding words. "Revenue" sounds like money you get. More revenue means we sold more widgets. If you mean taxes you should say taxes. Likewise, "majority" is a positive-connotation word. It suggests *being* in the majority, getting to righteously push other people around without even having to take responsibility for it. But majority voting is not inherently more democratic than plurality voting or consensus building. In fact, elections in similar districts tend to turn voter majorities into legislative supermajorities, whereas districting can create legislative majorities where no voter majority exists. So if anything, legislative supermajorities are more democratic.
Nonetheless, it should be easier for the CA legislature to budget responsibly, and the long version is way too negative.
Brown's summary is accurate. The California Constitution requires a 2/3 vote of the Legislature to raise taxes. This would change that. I'm all for it, because the Republican standoffs on budget every year (even without proposed tax increases) just gridlock the process. But to complain that Brown is at fault for noting it would reduce the 2/3 vote requirement on taxes to majority is a bit absurd. "Revenue" is a much broader term than "tax" which has specific meanings in statute and in case law. There are many cases where the meaning "fee" and "tax" have been litigated, yet both are revenue.
This is what happens when people who don't understand how to draft legislation or the legal meaning of certain terms try to write their own initiatives.
In the recent struggles for health care reform polls were all over the map. It soon became clear to me that questions like "Do you favor having a government bureaucrat involved in your health care?" would fare not nearly as well as "Do you favor having the government function as the sole payer for your health care, instead of private for-profit insurance firms?" in any poll. Yet the two could well be describing the exact same scenario.
To the issue at hand: There might be a good-government reason for wanting a little more than a simple 50%-plus-one vote majority when deciding important fiscal issues, but IMHO the current two-thirds majority needed has simply brought us to a standstill. It has to go. While I would vote in favor of a simple majority, a 55% majority would not bother me either.
Attorney General Jerry Brown surely understands the importance of how an issue is framed. I hope he rethinks his position.
Long-time Californians see the propositions as the legisture's way of passing the 'buck' on to the voters so that a legislator can say, whatever the outcome, "They made me do it."
A simple solution would be for the proponents of the California Democracy Act to remove "revenue' from their proposal.
>>>> The poll showed that the actual initiative for majority on revenue and budget is supported by likely California voters by a 73-to-22 percent margin -- a 51 percent lead.