Fourteen Propositions Await Your Judgment
Greetings, voters!
There are fourteen statewide propositions on your November ballot. “Oh no! Here we go again,” you might be thinking. “Yet another ballot with a zillion things I don’t care about. What a slog!”
Fret not, fellow citizen-legislators. This year, the propositions clump together, like premium cat litter, into a few manageable groups. The Tax clump has four propositions, including the famous Billionaire Tax. The Elections clump comprises another four, including a voter ID law. The Housing clump has three. That leaves just three unclumped measures: a rainy-day fund, bonds for immunology research, and whatever Prop 44 is. Fortunately, the unclumped measures are easy calls. So, for this election, you really need only concern yourself with those three clumps. Isn’t that better?
As usual, this fall I will rate all of the propositions, posting each one as I finish. Summaries will start appearing in late August, and details in September. Please return over the coming weeks to read up. You may agree or disagree, but you’ll come away a better informed voter.
The propositions are numbered strangely: 1 through 5, then 37 through 45. Why?
Background: The state Legislature has diddled with proposition numbers sporadically since 1994, giving low, out-of-sequence numbers to selected measures in 11 of the past 36 elections. Usually just one or two propositions have received special treatment, but in the last two general elections, it’s been five. At first, only bond measures got low numbers; then only measures originating in the Legislature; but this year, an initiative has joined the club. So there’s no obvious rhyme or reason.
Low ballot numbers do not guarantee passage. Two years ago, Props 5 and 6 failed by large margins despite their early positions, while Props 34 through 36 passed easily despite being buried at the end.
Especially befuddling was the lone ballot measure in last year’s special election, dubbed Proposition 50 when the next number in sequence would have been 37. The new number did not alter its ballot position; it would have been first (and only) regardless of whether it was Proposition 1 or Proposition 1,000,000. What convinced the Legislature that 50 was somehow a better number?
I asked my legislators, both of whom voted for this year’s renumbering bill (AB-182), and I heard back nothing coherent. (“We do this all the time. It’s perfectly routine.”) Apparently they just vote as they’re told.
Emily Schultheis and Will McCarthy of Politico report that some of this is folk wisdom: certain numbers are “dreaded” due to earlier measures, such as Proposition 8 (same-sex marriage) and Proposition 13 (property taxes). And they quote a political consultant who says, “I think there’s an advantage to being listed first on the ballot.” But no evidence is given for any of this.
However, rigorous studies on the topic do exist. In Ballot Position, Choice Fatigue, and Voter Behavior (2016), Prof. Ned Augenblick at UC Berkeley found, “Facing more decisions before a given contest significantly increases the tendency to abstain or rely on decision shortcuts, such as voting for the status quo. … [W]ithout choice fatigue, … 6% of the propositions in our data set would have passed rather than failed.”
Six percent is approximately one in fourteen. So it’s possible that one of the fourteen statewide propositions in this election, if given a high number, could be in danger of failing purely due to choice fatigue. The proposition would have to be teetering on the edge of a 50% majority, with many undecided voters. But it could happen.
So how did the Legislature choose which propositions to favor with low numbers? Again, my legislators aren’t saying, but it seems like a backroom deal. And why not? Proposition numbers have no tangible impact. Surely this is considered a political favor, doled out by leadership to reward loyal legislators and interest groups. No harm done, right?
But the discontiguous numbers look ridiculous, and they undoubtedly cause confusion. The apparent randomness of the gap can lead voters to concoct their own explanations. Maybe the party in power wants us to vote for all the low numbers and against all the high numbers. (This is not true; the Democratic Party supports Props 37, 38, and 40.) Maybe the lower-numbered props are older (nope), or cheaper (uh-uh), or more important (definitely not). The legislators who came up with this mishmash believed voters would neither notice nor care. But average voters, drafted into voting on a huge pile of obscure laws on uninteresting topics, will grope for any shortcut they can find. If they can invent a meaning for these numbers, they will.
Still, in the spirit of AB-182, I have a suggestion. Next election, it would be great to see some irrational numbers thrown in there, such as Proposition 𝜋 or Proposition √2. But why stop there? Why not emoji? I’d love to lead the campaign for or against Proposition 🍌, Proposition 👯, or Proposition 🤯!
Happy voting,
Pete Stahl
p.s.: In 2020, I stopped using Facebook to promote this site. I cannot reconcile my commitment to level-headed, factual analysis with Facebook’s corrosive behavior in politics. Facebook traps users in polarized bubbles, pushes discourse to the extremes, distributes misinformation and propaganda, and enables foreign interference in U.S. elections. I cannot, in good conscience, participate on a platform that behaves so destructively and irresponsibly.