Calif. initiative process has gone off course

[alp227]

Chip Johnson, SF Chronicle

Next year will be the 100th anniversary of the ballot initiative in California, but I'm not sure if we should hold a party or a wake.

The initiative process is no longer the sole purview of populist citizens looking for a way to wrest control from an unresponsive government.

In addition to its intended use by private-citizen groups, ballot-box budgeting - as it has come to be called - has become part of the arsenal of corporate-funded special-interest groups and elected officials looking to avoid difficult and often painful fiscal choices.

In California, voters have used the ballot box to decide everything from same-sex marriage to statewide auto insurance rollbacks to local after-school programs for youth in Oakland. Corporate interests have used the same political process to further their business or block citizen-sponsored measures to regulate them.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/02/BALR1C94VT.DTL

[marybourg]

1. I don't think it's "gone off course." It's just exhibiting its inherent

weakness. That's why our founding generation opted for representative, instead of pure, democracy.

[demosincebirth]

2. California is governed by initiatives instead of elected officials. Leave it

to voters to make laws that come back and bite you in the ass. The Robber Barons and Railroad Moguls are no longer around. We need to change the system or, drastically, trim it back. Its got to the point where big corporation and special interests groups have taken over the initiative system and exploited it for their own gain.

[bemildred]

3. Maybe all the money in politics has something to do with it.

We elect a lot of incompetent weasels too, so it's not just the initiative process that isn't working.