New America in California

This summer, more than 400 Californians came together to discuss some of the biggest challenges facing their state -- including the need to reform California's initiative process:

Background on California's Initiative Process

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the creation of California’s initiative process, a system designed to put lawmaking power in the hands of the people. The initiative allows voters, often acting in organized groups, to collect signatures to put a new law or a change to the state constitution before their fellow voters on the ballot. The initiative process was designed to make politicians more responsive to voter needs, and to help voters to get around politicians when they are not responsive.

The initiative process has long been the focus of civic debate, study, and proposed reform. Some believe that the initiative is an important tool for good government and that the initiative process, while sometimes flawed, is still effective. Others worry that the initiative process often no longer works the way it was designed, and that special interests have taken over the very process meant to limit their power.

California allows citizens to use the initiative process to create laws or statutes, and to amend the state constitution. Since the state adopted the system, Californians have adopted 115 initiatives, including 64 laws and 42 constitutional amendments. Initiatives n eed only a simple majority of the vote to pass, and they usually pass only by narrow margins.

For more background information, please visit: What's Next California? The Initiative Process

Results

Full results are available here.

Overall, participants in the deliberative poll trusted their own decisions through the initiative process and wanted to preserve the process as an exclusive tool of the public. However, they also strongly supported reforms that would increase transparency and empower voters to better understand the consequences of initiatives they are asked to evaluate.  

Support for the proposal for “creating a formal review process to allow an initiative’s proponents to amend an initiative follow public input” increased 17 points from 59% to 76%.  “Publishing the top five contributors for and against each ballot measure in the ballot pamphlet” increased its support from 82% to 91%.  Ninety-one percent also supported requiring the Legislative Analyst to provide an analysis on the ballot pamphlet of how a proposal was likely to be paid for.

Participants had little interest in reforms that would enable the Legislature to affect initiatives’ content in any way. Four proposals suggested ways in which the legislature might remove or amend an initiative, or place a counter-measure on the ballot. None of these proposals achieved support above 37% after deliberation. “Allowing the Legislature to amend an initiative that has already passed, subject to two-thirds vote, even if an initiative’s proponents do not agree” fell to 18%. Allowing the Legislature to place a countermeasure on the ballot to an already qualified initiative ended at 30%. Allowing the Legislature to remove an initiative from the ballot by enacting it into law ended at 35%.