California ballot proposition

There are three forms of direct democracy in California state elections: mandatory referendums (part of the Constitution of California since 1856), optional referendums, and initiatives. The initiative and optional (or facultative) referendum were introduced as Progressive Era reforms in 1911, by a constitutional amendment called Proposition 7. According to the Initiative & Referendum Institute at USC, Gov. Hiram Johnson supported the creation of this process to balance the power that corporations, specifically Southern Pacific Railroad, had over legislators. In 2022, with Democrats having a super-majority in both houses of the legislature, corporations have been using this process to challenge the power that unions and other progressive activists currently yield in the legislature. California Senate Bill 202, passed in 2011, mandated that initiatives and optional referendums can appear only on the November general election ballot, a statute that was controversial at the time, being seen as a self-serving, single-party initiative; the November general election rule for initiatives and optional referendums has nevertheless persisted. Initiatives The minimum number of signatures for an initiative petition is at least 8 percent (for an amendment to the state constitution) or 5 percent (for a statute) of the number of people who voted in the most recent election for governor, as per Cal. Const., art. II, § 8(b); Elections Code § 9035. Based on the 2022 gubernatorial (governor) election, which saw a turnout of 10,933,018, initiative statutes require 546,651 signatures whereas initiative proposed constitutional amendments require 874,641. Previously, based on the 12,464,235 turnout for the 2018 gubernatorial election, the minimum number of required signatures needed to be collected was 623,212 for a proposed statute, and 997,139 for a proposed constitutional amendment up until 2022. The filing fee for submitting an initiative to the ballot was increased from $200 to $2,000 following the signing of a law in September 2015. This fee is refunded if the proposition makes it to the ballot. The $200 fee had been originally set in 1943, and the State Legislature felt that it needed to be increased to discourage people from proposing frivolous or improper measures for the ballot. Before initiative proponents may gather signatures, the Attorney General prepares an official title and summary for the proposed law, and the California Legislative Analyst's Office submits a report on its estimated fiscal effects. There is a 30-day public review period that begins after the Attorney General receives the submission and the filing fee, where any member of the public may submit public comments on the proposed initiative. The Attorney General then prepares the official title and summary after the public review period. The Legislative Analyst's Office has 50 days after receiving the final version of the proposed measure to prepare its report, and the Attorney General has 15 days after receiving these fiscal estimates to send the final official version of the title and summary to both the Secretary of State and the initiative proponents. and amendments to previously approved voter initiatives. More than 50 percent of the voters must then support these amendments or new laws on the ballot for them to go into effect. Optional referendum Laws already adopted by the state legislature may be vetoed by means of a referendum. This is also known as a "petition referendum" or "people's veto". The process is similar to an initiative as noted above, except that it is an already passed law submitted as a petition to the Attorney General. The proponent, however, only has 90 days after the law in question is enacted to submit the request to the Attorney General for a circulating title and summary, gather the signatures, and file the petitions with the county elections officials; otherwise, it must go through the initiative process, submitted as a proposed amendment. Laws that are ineligible for optional referendums include urgency statutes, statutes calling elections, and statutes providing for tax levies or appropriations for usual, current state expenses. ==Proposition numbering==

Originally, ballot propositions were given a number starting at one each election. This tended to be confusing as often famous initiatives such as Proposition 13 in 1978 might be confused with another initiative in a later year if there were more than twelve proposals on the ballot in any given year. Starting with the November 1982 ballot, the proposition numbers were not re-used but continued to increment every election, eventually resulting in proposition numbers exceeding 200 by the 1996 election. For the November 1998 ballot, the count was reset back to one. It is now reset every ten years. Since 2022, propositions originating in the California State Legislature start at one for each year while citizen initiatives retain the current numbering scheme. ==Conflicting propositions==

Under Article II, Section 10(b) of the California Constitution, "If provisions of 2 or more measures approved at the same election conflict, those of the measure receiving the highest affirmative vote shall prevail." However, those provisions that do not conflict with the winning proposition may still go into effect. To get around this loophole, many initiatives include so-called "poison pill" clauses, specifying which provisions are voided in the other propositions. The rule in the constitution was clarified in 1990 by the California Supreme Court in its ruling in Taxpayers to Limit Campaign Spending v. Fair Political Practices Commission: When two or more measures are competing initiatives, either because they are expressly offered as "all-or-nothing" alternatives or because each creates a comprehensive regulatory scheme related to the same subject, section 10(b) mandates that only the provisions of the measure receiving the highest number of affirmative votes be enforced. The Court was concerned that attempts to combine the non-conflicting provisions in such competing initiatives would result in regulatory schemes completely different from what the electorate understood or intended. ==Criticisms==

Criticism has been raised of the initiative process, suggesting that with trends toward lower voter turnouts, and evidence for voter disinterest in candidates and issues other than in presidential elections, that a "direct democracy system specifically designed to be inflexible" might be infeasible to continue as a way to make important California public policy decisions. With regard to the cumulative effect of stand-alone propositions passed by voters (see also the preceding section), complaint has been raised that they collectively limit the state legislature in dealing with issues comprehensively, e.g. in the overall shaping of public policy, or the overall management of the state budget. For example, legislators trying to pass a state budget must work around both Proposition 13's inflexible limits on taxes and Proposition 98's school-funding guarantee. ==See also==