Be Careful about Ballot Initiatives

The November elections are not very far away now, and excitement is in the air for, at least, the big races. Yet there is something of an elephant in the room, at least in Michigan, and, at least, according to the local political wonks anyway. No, it has little or nothing to do with Presidential politics. We are talking about the six statewide ballot proposals Michigan voters are faced with 7 weeks from today.

They cover subjects ranging from tax increases to collective bargaining rights. Each item is controversial to one degree or another, and likely as not all deserve discussion at one level or another. We'll look into each of them in the coming weeks; or, at least, we intend to. But today, we are interested in the game within the game. There is a controversy which covers all six initiatives, and it is interesting enough in itself. That is, if state constitutional issues can be all that interesting in themselves.

Anyway, backers of each proposal firmly believe that their ideas require public affirmation, so much so that what they want must be made part of our state's highest law. Yet others say that all which is happening is that we are clogging the constitution with issues which ought to be addressed by the Legislature and, further, that all these ballot measures simply confuse the electorate. They say that the effect of all this is an abuse of the Michigan Constitution.

Well, if the mechanism for constitutional amendment is what is causing all this, and the mechanism itself is acceptable under the terms of the US Constitution, it seems a stretch to say the local document is being abused. Ironically, should that be the case, perhaps the long term answer is to amend the state constitution to make ballot initiatives more difficult to put before the voters. Yet that is not the point today. What is now is what is now; if each of the six proposals are on the ballot legitimately under existing law then we cannot call them abuses. Simply because small, well funded groups may be behind any given one of them, a likelihood we don't doubt at least on one or two, cannot make their efforts illicit. At least, not on legal grounds.

Still, that doesn't mean we can't have a certain sympathy for the groups trying to cry foul. Some proposals may well be of questionable merit for non-legal reasons. Further, the confusion of the voters does appear a legitimate enough worry. We are quite sure that much of the electorate will not study the questions sufficiently enough to cast a rational ballot; when there is a lot to consider those not particularly interested in a question or questions simply will not consider them fully. That's hardly the fault of the state constitution, though; as such, we may fault the backers of these proposals as vague charlatans, depending, again, on the nature and content of the proposal. And merely because some of the proposal backers and funders may have less than the best of intentions does not make the legitimate ballot questions any less so.

As such, we seriously disagree those who say that every measure must be rejected simply because some people are, as a set of widely seen commercials have asserted, messing with Michigan's Constitution. The best thing to do as a voter is to consider each proposal on its own merits and vote accordingly. If you aren't sure how to vote, then no is better than yes as it simply isn't wise to support anything which you don't understand. After that, if the constitution needs tweaking, than all we really can do is hope that someone somewhere takes the bull by the horns and goes about getting it properly tweaked. Until then, it is silly to apply a blanket answer over what we face in the voting booth this November. To encourage the electorate to do that and reject the measures en masse is as questionable as the process which led to the measures in the first place. Those people are simply charlatans wearing new clothes.