Web Log
Nov 4, 05:09 AM | Author: jane kim | Category: politics
VOTE!
Did you know that Proposition 73 not only requires parental consent for a minor’s abortion, it also defines abortion for the first time in the State Constitution as causing “death of the unborn child, a child conceived but not yet born.” Why aren’t more people talking about this??
This is another example of why I believe that initiatives, a seemingly fine medium to get the public to take stances and make policies on issues that legislators can’t or don’t, has become instead:
1) a process which alienates voters and perhaps even lowers voter turnout, particularly young people, people of color and immigrants. People don’t vote because they feel overwhelmed when they see all the numbers and letters on their ballots or they don’t understand what each proposition is about.
2) a forum for electeds and candidates to run every year. Vote for __’s (insert elected official’s name) proposition. A good example is this year: “Vote for the Governor’s Propositions.” Another great example is 2002’s “Care Not Cash,” an initiative which was more about how Newsom would do in the 2003 Mayorial race than about homeless people, not to mention a way to ID friendly Newsom VOTERS a year ahead. The following year, almost all the mayorial candidates had an initiative on the ballot to underscore their own campaign and how great they were. One included Alioto’s “separate families, seniors and disabled from other homeless people in shelters” proposition. The actual written legislation, no more than a paragraph, provided no money to allow this to happen (and therefore nothing happened when it passed, all we got was that we knew that we wanted to separate them). But how could you vote no on separating poor seniors, families and disableds who are thrown into the same shelter as those young sharks? Even I couldn’t vote no. Vote for seniors, vote for Alioto! This one was so ridiculous that one of my friends said that if he ever ran for Mayor, he would put a “RAPE IS BAD” initiative. Vote no for the initiative (and therefore him) and you would be saying rape is good.
3) a race that is really about which side can spend MORE MONEY to buy TV air time, send mailers and pay expensive consultants to cook up nice sounding “sound bites” such as “the death tax” or “equality for all” to influence unknowing voters who will not read the entire voter handbook nor understand all the wonkish gibberish
and is therefore
4) a waste of taxpayer’s dollars.
It would be great if initiatives were really a “people’s” way of getting heard or making change. But really, you can’t write and put an initiative on the ballot without A LOT OF MONEY. And we often pass legislation that is unsound or unconstitutional but sounds good or fits the current political climate. Examples include “blame teachers for our bad schools”(prop 74) or “stop immigrants who are taking all of our money” (prop 187) or “equality without regards for race” (prop 209). Initiatives play into voter’s fears and frequently promote bad legislation that don’t even fix those fears in the first place. And really, who does all this initiative backing anyway? People with MONEY (ie. wealthy individuals and corporations).
In addition, as a progressively minded individual, I believe that good organizers’ and activists’ time and energy are wastefully exhausted EVERY NOVEMBER fighting bad propositions. Yeah, it brings us all together and that’s good. But really, a lot of these good hard working people could be spending their 3-6 months a lot better making change in their community without phonebanking, holding signs, dropping literature, strategizing, fundraising to stop bad legislation every year. Frankly. I am tired of it. I haven’t spent an election day sunrise in bed in a while.
That being said, don’t forget to vote. Because despite all that I have said against propositions, they still exist and many of them are very harmful.
NO on 73, 74, 75, 86, 77, and 78
Yes on 79 and 80
YES on B, C, D, E, G, H, I
NO on F
Read more in Issues.
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