Quotes of the Day

Outside a Target store in Orange County, California, Elbie Birch hawks his wares: ballot propositions. "Excuse me, gentlemen, are you registered voters?" Birch, a tall, burly man with a shaved head, goatee and winning smile, is a professional initiative-signature gatherer. In the past year, he has worked on gerrymandering in Florida, a casino issue in Ohio and affordable housing in Massachusetts before coming to California — the undisputed capital of direct democracy — where he is hustling a stack of nine ballot initiatives. Birch gets 50 cents to $1 for every signature he gathers.

In states such as California, Colorado and Oregon, it is hard to think about politics and government without speaking about ballot initiatives — some of which can come crashing down on a state capitol like a tsunami. The so-called Progressive Era in U.S. history (from the 1880s to the 1920s) bestowed the secret ballot and direct elections for the U.S. Senate and the city manager, as well as the initiative, the referendum and the recall. The latter, of course, transformed Arnold Schwarzenegger the movie star into Arnold the Gubernator when the actor became California governor after voters chose to recall Democrat Gray Davis.

The initiative system, however, may have caused the most havoc in California. In 1978, Proposition 13 imposed strict limits on local property taxes, gutting the budgets of schools and local governments, which have been bailed out by Sacramento ever since. It also requires a two-thirds vote to raise taxes, granting antitax Republicans, a minority in the state ;egislature, great power. Proposition 98 requires California to spend 40% of the state budget on public schools, which places enormous pressure on other state programs, such as higher education and the courts. These and numerous others have put California government in something of an ever tightening straitjacket.

And yet the initiative imperative persists. Every five minutes Birch hooks a customer. "My job is to make people aware and to get signatures," says Birch, 44, who earns free board from Professional Petition Consultants if he makes his quota of 1,400 signatures a week. Theresa Williams, 29, is shopping, with 2-year-old Eithan in her cart. Birch approaches her with a measure that would prevent Sacramento from tapping local transportation projects' and municipal governments' coffers to balance the state's chronically unbalanced budget. In quick succession he pitches measures to close a corporate tax loophole, fund the state's parks with an additional $18 charge to vehicle registration, strip the legislators of their paychecks if they are late passing a budget, tighten term limits from 14 years to 12 years, and increase the vote requirement to two-thirds for any state levies and charges currently subject to majority vote.

"No more new taxes without your approval," says Birch. "They'll need two-thirds to pass it." Birch admits he is not aware that California is the only state in the union where it is necessary to obtain a two-thirds majority in the legislature to pass a budget and initiate a new tax. (There is another proposed measure, which Birch is not peddling, that would change the legislative vote required to pass a state budget from two-thirds to a simple majority.) Williams, a regular voter, admits to confusion on many of the initiatives. "I never know what to do. I think representative government is a good thing, but I am one of the few." Angie Sim, 37, likes the tax measures. "Less taxes are better for me." Jessica Moore, a junior in college who supports "green" ballot measures, says, "They push you to sign the initiative, but they don't tell you everything. I think the special interests control the initiative process."

More than 80 proposed initiatives have been approved for circulation, and experts expect eight to 10 to qualify for the November ballot. "Right now, anyone with $200 and enough signatures can put something on the ballot [in California]," says Mark Paul, a senior scholar with the New America Foundation's California Program. "People assume these things are vetted, but they are not." Twenty-four states allow citizens to make laws and constitutional amendments directly by way of the initiative process. Fred Kimball, the owner of Kimball Petition Management, believes initiatives are an answer to a legislative process he says is "handcuffed by a lack of bipartisanship and the effect of lobbyists." He says the initiative system gives people power to change things for the better.

Critics of direct mass democracy say many ballot measures are flawed and incoherent and that hot-button measures — such as initiatives on immigration, guns and offshore drilling — are designed to bring out certain groups of voters on Election Day. As Kimball points out, the biggest positive of the initiative process is that states with ballot measures as part of the political culture are more responsive to the citizenry than states without. The biggest negative is that the cumulative effect of initiatives — some of them constitutional amendments nearly cast in stone — severely hamstrings state legislators and governors as they do their jobs.

While it costs only $200 to file a proposed initiative, the work of collecting enough signatures is another matter. Putting a measure on the ballot requires money, which places the most powerful interest groups in the driver's seat. Qualifying a measure in California often costs more than $1 million, with initiatives for a constitutional amendment requiring 8% of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election, or 694,354 signatures, and a proposed law requiring 5%, or 433,971. The signatures must be gathered in 150 days.

Instead of turning to the initiative system, Paul and his New American colleague Joe Mathews recommend making more use of the referendum. "It's easier to write a new law, an initiative, than hold a referendum on a law the legislature has passed. Today, we have voters making laws. A better system is for voters to pass judgments on laws." At the moment, though, referendums have the same 5% signature requirement that initiatives do. Paul and Mathews suggest lowering that to 1%. They also suggest revising the initiative itself, requiring sponsors to submit them to the legislature, where lawmakers would write a counterproposal. On the ballot, voters would choose between the two options and indicate which proposal they prefer if both measures pass by more than 50%.

In response to the layers of initiatives that have made California government increasingly dysfunctional, the Bay Area Council business group announced a plan last year to put an initiative on the ballot to hold a new constitutional convention. But two weeks ago, its Reform California campaign ran out of money. One reason: Kimball's firm and others, fearing such a convention might change the initiative business, warned their contractors against carrying the petitions. Very few of the signature gatherers at the shopping malls across California are volunteers; nearly all are contractors like Birch, working for firms hired by the state's most powerful political players — many of whom like the system as it is.

• Kevin O'Leary / Los Angeles