Why Are California’s Progressive Politicians So Intent on Gutting Direct Democracy Rights?

June 1, 2023 By Jon Coupal Leave a Comment


When will progressives stop attacking the direct democracy rights?

A couple of months ago, this column exposed the threat that Senate Constitutional Amendment No. 1 posed to the power of recall. Among the powers of direct democracy, initiative, referendum and recall, the power to recall a statewide or local elected official provides voters with the ability to remove a sitting elected official in the middle of a term. Recalls are frequently deployed when an elected official has engaged in gross dereliction of duties such as the recent successful recall of San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin.

Currently, voters can recall a state officer by majority vote and, in the same election, elect a successor with a plurality of the vote. But SCA 1 would leave an office vacant in the event of a successful recall until a replacement is elected in a special election. This deprives voters of knowing who will replace the politician they are recalling and there would be no one to perform the duties of that office. In addition, under SCA 1 the rules would be different for a gubernatorial recall. If a governor is removed from office in a recall election, the lieutenant governor becomes governor for the remainder of the unexpired term. In a one-party state, that deprives voters of a serious debate.

SCA 1 isn’t the only legislative attack on the right of direct democracy. Assembly Bill 421 would virtually destroy the right to referendum. Unlike the power of initiative, which is when citizens “initiate” the legislative process, the right to referendum is the power to subject a law enacted by the legislature to a “yea or nay” vote by voters. It is a power not used very often and normally deployed against laws that are extremely unpopular.

AB 421 would require that at least 5% of signature collection be done by volunteers which, for grassroots organizations like the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, would not present an insurmountable burden, but it would restrict the rights of other interests targeted by punitive legislation.

AB 421 also resurrects a horrible idea of changing the nature of a vote on a referendum. Currently, a referendum asks voters to step into the shoes of the Legislature to consider the proposed law. Voters vote “yes” on the measure to approve the proposal, and “no” to reject it. AB 421 would effectively turn a yes vote into a no vote and a no vote into a yes vote. When former Sen. Bob Hertzberg proposed the same idea, it failed to get out of the Legislature. But even Hertzberg knew that such a proposal would require a constitutional amendment. Here, proponents believe that they can accomplish the same objective with a statute. They are wrong.

AB 421 imposes other rules and requirements that are so burdensome and complicated that they defy description. Combined, all the provisions of AB 421 mean that  voters will never again see another referendum no matter how outrageous the legislative statute.

Since 1911, Californians have possessed powerful tools to control indolent or corrupt politicians. The rights of direct democracy — initiative, referendum, and recall — are enshrined in the California Constitution for reasons that are just as compelling now as they were more than a century ago.

Click here to read the full article in the OC Register

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A Win for Direct Democracy and Taxpayers in San Bernardino County

July 26, 2022 By Jon Coupal 6 Comments

Entrenched politicians loathe the tools of direct democracy, which include the powers of initiative, referendum, and recall. Both at the state and local levels, they do everything they can to limit the exercise of those powers, including going to court to nullify what voters do at the ballot box.

That’s what happened with Measure K in San Bernardino, which amended the County Charter to impose a one-term limit on members of the Board of Supervisors and reduce their pay from more than $200,000 per year to $5,000 per month. The Red Brennan Group, which spearheaded Measure K, said it puts the Board of Supervisors’ salary on par with the median household income in the county, and that a one-term limit would incentivize elected officials to focus on serving the public rather than maneuvering for reelection.

Unsurprisingly, Measure K was extraordinarily popular with voters who passed it by a two-thirds majority (66.84%). But while the citizens of San Bernardino County were celebrating, the Board of Supervisors launched a counter-attack by filing a lawsuit to get Measure K nullified. The Red Brennan Group stepped up to defend their initiative and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Foundation sent a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the legality of the measure.

Along with their lawsuit challenging Measure K, the Board of Supervisors ran to their allies in Sacramento to change the law in a way that would undercut the initiative. Assembly Bill 428 would prohibit term limits of less than two terms for a County Board of Supervisors and further provided that a Board can set the pay of its own members. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association objected to the bill and argued that it thwarted the will of the voters in San Bernardino. The author of the bill, Assemblyman Chad Mayes, I-Yucca Valley, denied that his bill would have that impact but his representations lacked credibility. Eventually, he relented and agreed to insert language into the bill that made clear it would “not affect any term limits that were legally in effect prior to January 1, 2022, in any county.”

Last week, an appeals court issued a tentative ruling in the lawsuit and sided with the voters, upholding Measure K’s one-term limit and the cut to the supervisors’ pay. The court also vindicated HJTF’s interpretation that the original version of AB 428 was an attempt to thwart the will of the voters in San Bernardino.

Noting that the amendment resolved any ambiguity, the court wrote, “Plainly, then, the Legislature did not contemplate that AB 428 would undo Measure K. To the contrary, it agreed with the Jarvis Association that the unamended version threatened Measure K, and thus it amended AB 428 so as to let Measure K stand.”

It’s satisfying to be recognized for the work HJTA does in defense of taxpayers, not only the hundreds of thousands of HJTA members, but all the California taxpayers whose interests are rarely represented by their elected officials.

Click here to read the full article in this the OC Register

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Defending Direct Democracy and Defending Taxpayers

February 11, 2019 By Jon Coupal 3 Comments

vote ballotsThe powers of direct democracy — initiative, referendum and recall — are powerful tools to control slow-moving or corrupt politicians. These powers are enshrined in the California Constitution for reasons that are just as compelling in 2019 as they were in 1911 when Gov. Hiram Johnson, seeking to suppress the absolute control the railroads had over the state Capitol, pushed to give ordinary citizens a “legislative battering ram” — using the language of the Supreme Court — to address issues that for whatever reason the Legislature refuses to address.

Political elites hate the initiative process. From their perspective it allows the great unwashed and unsophisticated to deal with matters such as taxation, victims’ rights, insurance and most importantly political reform. These are issues over which politicians strongly desire to exercise a legislative monopoly.

Like any political process, however, direct democracy can be abused. Some matters are indeed complicated and not well suited to a sound-bite campaign. Also, special interests with a lot of money can overwhelm the airwaves with TV and radio ads to convince a majority of voters (especially in a low-turnout election) to pass something they might later regret. Nonetheless, for taxpayers, direct democracy remains one of the few tools we have to protect ourselves.

Landmark initiative measures such as Propositions 13 and 218 have given taxpayers the kind of protection against greedy government entities that we would never have obtained but for rights granted through direct democracy. But taxpayers must do more than propose initiatives and convince voters to enact them. We must also defend them in court against never-ending assaults. For years, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association has maintained a potent litigation capacity with three full-time lawyers and access to dozens more willing to defend not just taxpayer-sponsored initiatives but the very power of direct democracy itself.

And so it is that HJTA finds itself back before the California Supreme Court on an important direct democracy case.

To read the entire column, please click here.

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Is Voting for Voting’s Sake a Good Thing?

March 17, 2015 By Jon Coupal 6 Comments
Voter turnout in California is low. Just three weeks ago, the election held in Los Angeles saw an embarrassing 10 percent turnout. And, of course, the statewide turnout just last November was almost as bad.Irrespective of political affiliation, the immediate reaction among those of us who are politically engaged is that low voter turnout is not good for democracy. But perhaps we should challenge that bit of conventional wisdom. Is voting for voting’s sake really a good thing?

Members of the self-serving political class, made up of politicians and the special interests that support them, complain about the lack of voter participation because they believe they should be seen as patriotically promoting the democratic process. But their faux sincerity is based entirely on whether or not they see a greater political advantage to a higher voter turnout. If they believe that a higher turnout will drive more low information voters, who can be easily persuaded by glossy mailers, they are all for more voters. (At one point it was suggested that Los Angeles should increase turnout by providing those who vote a chance to win cash through a lottery system.) If they don’t think that the additional votes are likely to help them, they will do nothing substantive to actually encourage greater participation.

Then there are the members of the “social engineering” class who are constantly looking after our welfare. Their thinking parallels that of those who want to control how much fat we eat, how much soda we drink and who want to get us out our cars. They know what is best for us, and what is best for us is that we all vote. (Daniel Webster once said that “the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions.”)

From newspaper editors to academics, the “do-gooder” class weighs in on ways to solve this “serious problem” of voter disinterest and will sometimes stoop to promoting gimmicks to gin up turnout. On the Los Angeles ballot was a city charter amendment, which passed, that moves local elections so as to coincide with the state and federal elections that take place in even-numbered years. Almost no consideration was given to the fact that local issues will now become buried under the publicity surrounding races for president, governor, Congress and the Legislature. And if even-numbered years make such a big difference, why were the elections in 2014, an even-numbered year, ignored by so many voters?

There is no one reason why more eligible voters don’t participate. Some say that voting makes no difference, so why bother. Others may actually be exercising their right not to vote because they simply don’t see the need. Others might intelligently conclude that they are not personally informed enough and are satisfied with the decisions made by those who are more informed.

Let’s just hope that the scolds and manipulators will relax and let citizens exercise their constitutional rights as they see fit. Just as it is legally and morally wrong to prevent citizens from voting, we would find it extremely unpleasant to live with a system under which voting became compulsory.

Don’t believe that could happen? In the 2002 Iraqi presidential elections the turnout was 100 percent and Saddam Hussein received every one of the 11,445,638 votes. We suspect that many of those “participants” would have enjoyed the right not to vote.

Jon Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association — California’s largest grass-roots taxpayer organization dedicated to the protection of Proposition 13 and the advancement of taxpayers’ rights.

This piece originally appeared on HJTA.org

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