I have to take issue with this part: > A study of more than 1,200 state-level ballot questions that voters across the US were asked to approve between 1997 and

I have to take issue with this part: > A study of more than 1,200 state-level ballot questions that voters across the US were asked to approve between 1997 and 2007 found that, on average, they were written at a 17th-grade level — in other words, you’d need more than a four-year college degree in order to understand what you were being asked to vote on. Flesch-Kincaid is a terrible measure, at least if taken at face value about the "grade level" of a text. See for instance http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=15456 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=15456 or http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=21847 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=21847 .