This year’s California county voter information guides will once again display a serious inequity. Arguments in favor of bond and tax measures will usually be well written and signed by several local luminaries. Arguments against will often be less professionally written, have fewer signers, and may even be completely missing.
In San Bernardino County, for example, voters will see no argument against Measure Y, which would authorize $898 million in borrowing for the San Bernardino Community College District. Nor will they see any reason not to support Measure Z, authorizing $345 million in new bonds for San Bernardino City Unified School District.
Homeowners living in both districts would face combined estimated average annual levies of $70 per $100,000 of assessed value. Nevertheless, they will receive no explanation of why either proposal might be a mistake in the taxpayer-funded voter guides mailed to their homes.
This imbalance is not simply the result of public enthusiasm for higher taxes. It reflects ballot argument procedures that make participation far easier for government agencies and their allies than for ordinary taxpayers or groups representing them.
The argument supporting Measure Y cites aging classrooms, asbestos, mold, wildfire risks, and the need to train nurses and firefighters. Its carefully selected signers include a nurse, a fire chief, a small business owner, an oversight committee member, and a skilled trades graduate. The argument even links to a website where voters can learn more about the pro-bond case.
Such arguments do not appear spontaneously. Governing bodies proposing taxes and bonds typically have administrators, communications staff, attorneys, financial advisers, and consultants helping prepare for the election. Supporters can readily recruit credible signers and meet filing requirements.
Opponents, by contrast, usually depend on volunteers who may be juggling jobs and family obligations. Before they can even organize, they must discover that a measure exists, understand its implications, recruit signers, draft an argument, and navigate unfamiliar filing rules.
Local government’s reliance on traditional, paper-based systems makes things worse. City and county elections officials often require printed copies of arguments with original handwritten signatures, forcing argument authors to collect signatures physically and deliver completed documents before the deadline in person.
While opposing local measures this summer, our group of Contra Costa County volunteers drove hundreds of miles collecting and submitting paperwork on a short timeline. Filing rebuttals in addition to original arguments (theoretically a right belonging to both sides) can double the amount of driving.
And the deadlines themselves can be equally unreasonable.
For late-filed November measures, which could be submitted by the governing body up to August 7, San Bernardino County set deadlines of August 17 and August 21, for initial arguments and rebuttals respectively. That gave potential opponents little time to discover the measures, research them, find signers, and respond to proponents’ arguments.
Even more troubling, the “impartial analysis” also required for the voter guide was due five hours after the primary argument deadline. Opponents had to submit their arguments before the analysis became available. Proponents had no comparable disadvantage: Knowing their measures well, they could likely predict how the impartial analyses would read.
These problems have straightforward solutions.
First, require counties to accept secure electronic signatures. California already recognizes qualifying digital signatures under Government Code Section 16.5. The Fair Political Practices Commission also allows secure electronic signatures on certain political disclosure forms. Ballot arguments should receive the same treatment.
Second, create an online ballot material filing portal for use statewide. Authors could submit arguments, collect signatures electronically, and receive confirmation that their filings were both acceptable and ultimately selected by the election authority over arguments submitted by other individuals or groups. The system could automatically apply California’s sometimes counterintuitive word-counting rules, publish arguments after filing deadlines, and deliver opposing arguments to rebuttal authors.
Third, standardize deadlines statewide. Election officials should publish impartial analyses before arguments are due, provide adequate time after measures qualify for the ballot, and give rebuttal authors more time to respond to primary arguments. Taxpayer groups working across multiple cities and counties should not have to decipher different deadlines and procedures in every jurisdiction.
These reforms would not guarantee the presence of opposition arguments, let alone the quality of these arguments. But they would partially level the playing field, making it easier for citizens to present competing viewpoints before voters decide whether to assume new taxes and debt. In this way, California can take an important step toward realizing the vision of direct democracy Hiram Johnson laid out over a century ago.
Marc Joffe is a Visiting Fellow at California Policy Center and President of the Contra Costa Taxpayers Association.