Ballot measures: Pros, cons, & recommendations

by Yuki Hebner and Madison Pfau

What are ballot measures?

• Ballot measures can propose (Initiative), change (Amendment), or repeal (Referendum) legislation.

• Only 24 states (+ Washington D.C.) allow citizens to introduce legislation by petitioning (via signature collection) for a ballot measure.

  • Statewide measures appear on the ballot as “Proposition [number]”.

  • Countywide measures appear on the ballot as “Measure [letter]”.

• If a state-wide ballot measure passes a simple majority in the election, then it becomes law.

  • Local measures may require 55% or a ⅔ majority 

*We are covering ballot measures that we perceive to be the most science-relevant. We do not cover Propositions 15, 21, 22, 24.

*Drawings (with the exception of Prop. 16) are by Alfred Twu. 

Pros:

1. Renewing CIRM will combat current federal efforts to limit embryonic research models.

   • Ex:  Mandates that labs funded by nonfederal sources for stem cell research must use nonfederal funding, of which there is substantially less of, for additional laboratory space and equipment

2. Renewing CIRM will also support the continuation & development of clinical trials

Cons: 

While we do support renewing CIRM, we find it necessary and useful to point out several of its persisting flaws:

1. CIRM, which was established and granted $3 billion in 2004, has yet to produce an FDA-approved treatment and may contribute to lack of public trust in scientific endeavors.

   • The original CIRM campaign in 2004 drew in the general public with high expectations about the ability to rapidly cure rare diseases (ex: a television advertisement stated that CIRM “will rescue... a million people with Parkinson’s disease”).

   • The scientific community may appreciate the time it takes to develop molecular therapeutics and bring them to clinical trials, as well the value of fundamental biological research to progress our understanding of relevant physiological systems. However, the scientific community may have projected misleading and undelivered promises regarding reasonable timelines to accomplish CIRM’s goals. This has somewhat soured voters, who are once again being asked for their trust and support. 

2. The renewal perpetuates a flaw of the original proposal, which is the lack of legislative oversight and transparency.

   • Understandably, conflicts of interest have been prevalent in CIRM’s grant-allocation procedures, since many past & current members of the governing board (ex. UC Regent Sherry Lansing) are affiliated with the major scientific institutions that receive those grants.

   • Although CIRM is a publicly funded research institution, like the National Institute of Health (NIH), CIRM Chairman Jonathan Thomas has a salary roughly double that of NIH director Francis Collins.

3. Passing this law will allow academic science faculty, who are overwhelmingly male, to claim victory over pro-life advocates (the primary opposition to stem cell research) without reckoning with the ongoing detrimental influence of such advocates on women’s healthcare access across CA, including at major medical institutions like UCLA Health.

Pros: 

1. Since the codification of Proposition 209, racial segregation in schools has increased in CA, a trend that is reflected nationwide. Institutions like the UC system are poised to combat this trend.

2. Diversity in the workplace improves innovation and productivity.

3. Data shows that white and Asian American students were not disadvantaged by affirmative action in CA, nor did they substantially benefit when it was repealed.

Cons: 

1. Reinstating affirmative action will not increase the diversity of the faculty makeup as fast as that of the student body at schools like UCLA due to slow faculty turnover.

   • Schools must proactively reform their learning environments to support (i.e., create work-study opportunities, facilitate networking, fund clubs, provide special-interests housing, vetting curricula for comprehensive historical accuracy and representation) rather than simply expand the range of diversity in the students they admit. Too often, underrepresented students must advocate for their inclusion and are left to take on the responsibility of institutional improvement themselves.

2. People opposed to such measures insist that they admit under-qualified students due to racial preference and can harm those students it aims to help.

   • Ex: UCLA law professor Richard Sander has been prolific about his mismatch theory that posits the preferential admission of marginalized students further disadvantages those students by condemning them to suffer academically and be outperformed by their peers.

   • However, data suggests otherwise. Following the ban on affirmative action (Prop 209), Black and Latinx applicants were less likely to apply and be accepted to top ranked schools. Contrary to what what mismatch theory would predict, decreased attendance of marginalized students at competitive schools did not improve academic performance or graduation rates.

Pros: 

1. The rate of felony conviction skews heavily towards nonwhite defendants (ex: state prisons have 8.8X the number of Black vs. white prisoners) due to the criminalization of public health issues, expense of legal representation, targeted surveillance, discriminatory sentencing laws, the orchestration of overwhelmingly white juries, etc. This disproportionate rate of incarceration of people of color reflects a mechanism of racially charged voter suppression, regardless of intention. 

Cons: 

1. Since people cannot vote while incarcerated, critics assert that voting ineligibility should continue during parole (i.e., community supervision), which is technically included in a sentence. However, returning citizens face substantial challenges when re-entering society, and disenfranchisement has not been shown to facilitate this process and can perpetuate feelings of isolation and shame instead.

2. There is debate on whether “no taxation without representation” applies to returning citizens. 

Pros:

1. This would allow younger voters to weigh in on ballot measures and elections during the primary. This is especially pertinent in CA, where many candidates do not proceed to the general election due to the top-two primary format.

2. By allowing early primary access, the 17 year olds in question can be exposed to the mechanisms and information pertaining to voting (i.e., mail-in ballots, voter guides, polling centers). They will be better equipped with the experiences and resources to successfully cast an informed vote in the general election. 

Cons:

1. The opposition argues that 17 year olds exist within “information bubbles” heavily influenced by social media, teachers, and parents. However, it is unclear how this argument distinguishes between voters who turn 18 by the time of a primary and voters who turn 18 by the time of a general election, which is the specific question at hand.

2. The opposition argues that since adolescent brains are still developing, 17 year olds lack the cognitive ability to make informed decisions. While the transition from 17 to 18 is legally significant, it is not evident that this transition reflects a comparable and biologically meaningful advance in brain development.

Pros: 

1. This measure will grant tax breaks to relocating & disadvantaged homeowners: specifically, those who are senior, disabled, or moving because they lost their home in a wildfire.

   • The proposed tax break will allow people who move to pay property tax on their new residence at the value of their previous residence.

2. There is currently a tax break that prevents tax reassessment (adjusting to market value) of a property upon its inheritance. This measure makes less people eligible for (narrows) this tax break.

   • However, people who inherit a primary residence will continue to receive this tax break.

   • Only those who inherit property and use it as secondary residence (i.e. vacation home, rental listing) will become ineligible for this tax break. In LA, 63% of inherited properties are non-primary residences. 

   • The revenue generated by restricting tax break eligibility will be used to create a California Fire Response Fund (CFRF).

Cons: 

1. The proposed California Fire Response Fund (CFRF) does not allocate resources to effective methods of wildfire prevention (i.e. controlled burns vs. fire suppression, brush removal vs. fuel breaks, forest thinning vs. clear-cutting for timber export). Continuing to center fire policy on emergency response rather than ecological management is ill-informed and short-sighted.

2. CFRF does not include plans to improve conditions for incarcerated firefighting labor (including juvenile detainees), who compose ⅙ of CA’s firefighting force. These firefighters work 24 hour shifts for a $3 daily wage, saving the state ~$100 million annually while sustaining an increased rate of injuries and long-term health complications than non-incarcerated firefighters.

Pros: 

The ballot initiative would require persons convicted of certain misdemeanors (that were classified as wobblers/felonies before reform bills in 2014) to submit to the collection of DNA samples for state and federal databases. Research indicates that perpetrators of violent crimes (ex: sexual violence) often have a history of convictions, both violent and non-violent. In such cases, an expanded database could be valuable. However, DNA forensics is prone to error, a reality that is largely neglected. 

Cons: 

The ballot initiative will repeal a series of legislative changes that were largely in response to the US Supreme Court ruling that overcrowding in state prisons results in cruel and unusual punishment. Specifically, changes will be made to:

• AB 109 (2011; shifted the imprisonment of non-serious/violent/sexual offenders from state prisons to local jails; shifted the responsibility of supervising parole from the state to counties for some felony convictions)

• Proposition 47 (2014; Changed several non-serious/violent crimes from felonies or wobblers to misdemeanors)

• Proposition 57 (2016; increased parole chances for felons convicted of nonviolent crimes)

Pros: 

By mandating government regulations and spending, the measure would move California towards the de-privatization of dialysis services, 73% of which are controlled by just two corporations - DaVita and Fresenius. Privatization of the dialysis industry has resulted in a 350% markup of insurance premiums. 

Cons:

1. The proposed regulations are not predicted to improve quality of care: for example, the measure mandates physician presence at dialysis clinics without requiring physicians to be trained in kidney care or dialysis. The assumption that any physician would provide better care than specialized, licensed health-care providers is unfounded.

2. The expense of such regulations is predicted to force the closure of dialysis clinics in predominantly low-income and rural areas, impairing health care access for those this measure was designed to assist. (Similarly, mandating regulations that strain health-care clinics without improving safety outcomes is a widely employed tactic to reduce access to reproductive health care.) 

3. Dialysis services are highly regulated in California and studies show that they are just as good as other clinics across the country. Without evidence that dialysis clinics lack sufficient staffing & accountability, it is inappropriate to ask voters to evaluate the standard of care in medical clinics. While the de-privatization of the dialysis industry certainly has the potential to improve accessibility to care, this measure implements expensive and ineffective regulations that are more likely to impede than strengthen health care access. 

Read our policy memo on cash bail in California and what is at stake with Proposition 25, published in the Journal of Science Policy & Governance.

Pros:

Wealth will not determine a defendant’s eligibility for pretrial release.

Cons:

This reform is not predicted to decrease pretrial detention, which is substantially harmful to physical and mental health, and will instead impede the implementation of meaningful & urgently necessary decarceration tactics. The bill does not mandate increasing the rates of pretrial release. Risk-assessment tools tend to over-predict criminal behavior & rely on racially discriminatory data (i.e. neighborhood, employment, education), and the substantial variation in judicial decisions across municipalities reflects that judges can also be subject to the same external pressures, biases, etc. as the general population.

Pros:

A wealth of studies highlight the ineffectiveness and detriment of criminalization as the primary response to issues of adolescent behavior, mental illness, substance abuse, homelessness, etc. De-bundling public safety and public health issues from the criminal justice system will require substantial efforts, and is long overdue. 

Cons: 

Opposition by Sheriff Alex Villanueva has called the measure a veiled attempt to reduce funding for law enforcement.