Friday, July 29, 2005

Ballot Initiative Reform?

Some folks say California's ballot initiative system needs to be reformed. I suppose I'd agree some changes need to be made. Yesterday, Dan Weintraub's California Insider blog mentioned a column by Michael Hiltzik, presumably a columnist from the L.A. Times, where some possible reforms that could be made to the initiative process were suggested.

One thing I think might be accomplished from at least one of his suggested reforms is that hopefully we'd avoid some of the fiascos we've seen the last couple weeks, with initiatives being thrown out because of wording discrepencies and such. I think, though, Hiltzik has a bit too much faith in the state legislature to do the right thing.

One thing I'd like to see, as a requirement that Hiltzik doesn't mention, is that the entire text of the initiative- plus room for signatures- all fit one one legal size (8 1/2 x 16?) piece of paper. That includes both sides. If an initiative can't fit one one piece of paper, it's probably either written wrong, or bad legislation in the first place.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home