One interesting side note to today’s Supreme Court decision regarding Proposition 8:

The Court’s reasoning does not take into account the fundamental principles or the practical dynamics of the initiative system in California, which uses this mechanism to control and to bypass public officials—the same officials who would not defend the initiative, an injury the Court now leaves unremedied. The Court’s decision also has implications for the 26 other States that use an initiative or popular referendum system and which, like California, may choose to have initiative proponents stand in for the State when public officials decline to defend an initiative in litigation.

By finding that the proponents of a ballot measure have no standing to sue in federal court, the majority has set up a system in which California and other states can roll back voter initiatives they disagree with by simply refusing to defend them in federal court.

This is undemocratic and strange, but I have to admit it doesn’t bother me much because…

The Initiative System Sucks

The initiative process in California is fundamentally broken. Rather than encouraging democracy, it undermines it by diffusing authority for basic decisionmaking in the state. No politician in California is ever responsible for anything because everything is subject to referendum. Voters elect politicians who cannot change how money is spent or raised or how crimes are punished. Then we all complain that nothing gets done in Sacramento.

Worse, the initiative process distills every complex issue into a binary choice: Yes or no with no potential for compromise or revision.

True, sometimes the system does good work. It offers chances for reform on issues like drugs or political redistricting that would probably die in the capitol. But more often it works as a system for millionaires and corporations to foist their personal agendas on California. A 1960s proposition sponsored by theater owners banned cable television in the entire state, and Proposition 13 famously destroyed local politics in California by capping property taxes.

The initiative process has become less odious in recent years (Prop 8 excepted) simply because liberals have gotten better and better at abusing it the way conservatives did thirty years ago. Despite that, I’m glad that the Supreme Court inadvertently smashed up the intiative system in their zeal to avoid deciding on gay marriage directly.