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Thats a bit misguided in interpreting the propositions. By default propositions cannot be override by the legislature, by adding the provision it was more amend

Thats a bit misguided in interpreting the propositions. By default propositions cannot be override by the legislature, by adding the provision it was more amendable than normal.

AaronFriel 5y ago
Today I learned: https://ballotpedia.org/Legislative_alteration https://ballotpedia.org/Legislative_alteration It still seems like California's process is the least democratic. It allows voters of the past to institute laws that are much, much more difficult to change than other laws. The "Supermajority approval for ... years following" that North Dakota and Washington follow, or expiring the protection of the initiative from amendment automatically after some number of years seems appropriate.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- coliveira 5y ago
  The US political system is full of anti-democratic laws. California is not the first and, unfortunately, no the last state to have such laws.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    If we're defining anti-democratic laws like this: > It allows voters of the past to institute laws that are much, much more difficult to change than other laws. then having a constitution is a pure exercise in anti-democracy. Are we calling that "unfortunate" now?
    - kergonath 5y ago
      Well, a constitution can be anti-democratic if it cannot be changed by the people. Loads of dictatorships and single-party oligarchies have undemocratic constitutions. In true democracies the constitution can be changed, and is regularly. So basically, being a democracy and having a constitution are orthogonal.
      - thaumasiotes 5y ago
        That is the opposite position to "having a constitution is anti-democratic", which is the position taken by AaronFriel's comment. > Loads of dictatorships and single-party oligarchies have undemocratic constitutions. Ehh... my impression was that the bigger problem, from a standard American perspective, is that loads of dictatorships have constitutions which are everything American evangelical democracy dreams of, but which they aren't too concerned with adhering to.
      - zajio1am 5y ago
        > Loads of dictatorships and single-party oligarchies have undemocratic constitutions. In many cases the issue is opposite. Many populist autocrats abuse democracies with constitution that can be changed too easily, so after one big win in election they can dismantle all checks and balances and independent institutions in the country.
- azernik 5y ago
  They're more difficult to change only in that they have to go through the same process by which they were instituted - a ballot initiative. The difficulty of repealing awful past propositions like Prop 13 is down to public opinion, not procedural limitations.
  - hellbannedguy 5y ago
    Here we go again on Prop 13. If you lived through the madness, you would understand. (I can guarantee you were born after, I'm Mad as Hell!, by Howard Jarvis. Every year taxes went up. Every year politicians squandered away that money on pet projects. Middle class residents feared tax day. I saw my dad cry once, and yes it was when he opened that tax bill from the county. Prop 13 is the only real thing, in my lifetime, that truly helped the middleclass, and poor. Yes---things were generally better 30-40 years ago, but don't blame our messed up society on prop 13. Their are days where I feel we need to get rid of prop 13 for a few years, and let those that weren't born see what happens? I have never heard anyone who lived through that time criticize prop 13, with the exception of a college professor trying to reel in young students during a lecture, or an upcoming politician trying to get young voters. Instead of ragging on a prop that helps low/middleclass tax payers; I wish the young would go after how the wealthy around the world are buying up our homes. With a phone call, or email, and then have the gall to leave them vacant. To the young professional programmers. Let's be honest. You will be most likely shown the door around 50. If you happened to buy a house, you will eventually cherish prop 13.
    - pclmulqdq 5y ago
      In most places other than California, the problem of greedy politicians who raise taxes and spend the money on corruption and crap is to vote out the politicians. If you feel unsafe at tax time, your elected leaders should feel unsafe on election day. It's really telling that Californians instead passed a terrible market-distorting ballot measure (which incentives hedge funds to buy properties to avoid the tax being readjusted again and pushes up prices so that nobody other than a hedge fund could afford them). If you're worried about affordability of houses, prop 13 (combined with NIMBYism and restrictive zoning laws in cities) is one of the main reasons why they are unaffordable. It sounds like it didn't even register to Californians that maybe they should have voted for the other guy for a little while.
- jonas21 5y ago
  > It still seems like California's process is the least democratic. Did you mean the most democratic? California's process means the legislature can't override the will of the people -- only the people can do that, through another ballot initiative. I'm not saying it's necessarily a good thing, but California ballot initiatives are about as close to direct democracy as you can get.
  - specialist 5y ago
    > Did you mean the most democratic? Insert sound of my head imploding. Even "democracy" is ambiguous. Representative vs direct vs participatory vs ... We have to consider more than just the voting method. Power relationships, structure of discourse, processes for modification, ad nauseum. My meager best effort at divining the core essence of "democracy" is "consent of the governed". Weak sauce, I know.
  - MichaelZuo 5y ago
    It seems like the parent has an understanding of the term quite different from the norm.
    - RuggedPineapple 5y ago
      How? That's been the understanding for hundreds of years and derives farther back then even our own country. It has its roots in English constitutional law and the principle of Parliamentary Sovereignty, one of the main tenets of which is that no previous act is allowed to bind the hands of a future parliament, to do so thwarts the democratic will of the people expressed by who they chose to elect.
      - MichaelZuo 5y ago
        To clarify I mean this comment ‘It still seems like California's process is the least democratic.’ Which is a bizarre way of looking at referendums, as it would imply that referendums over the entire voting population are less legitimate than bills enacted by a representative body.
  - 5y ago
- renewiltord 5y ago
  You mean “the most democratic”. It is direct democracy in rare instances to overrule the indirect democracy. The people speak and only the people can undo what they make.
- pclmulqdq 5y ago
  The interesting question is whether voters can pass laws that are straight up unconstitutional. The courts are an important check on the power of legislators, but if they don't apply to the people, there may be some really interesting ballot initiatives in the future. CA's ballot initiative process is democracy taken too far. It is close the point where democracy becomes the tyranny of the mob.
  - arcbyte 5y ago
    It's a simple answer: they can't. The constitution lays out the process for accomplishing things that everyone "agrees" to by living under its jurisdiction. If you want to accomplish something unconstitutional, you can, you just have to first amend the constitution.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  The word 'democracy' has its origins in the Greek language. It combines two shorter words: 'demos' meaning whole citizen living within a particular city-state and 'kratos' meaning power or rule. It seems like a direct ballot initiative is no less democratic than an indirect representative making laws to govern the people. (I think it’s more, but it surely is not less.) You can say you don’t like a given initiative; it’s much harder to argue that the process is undemocratic.
commoner 5y ago
The standard is a two-thirds majority, so Proposition 22 (with a seven-eighths majority hurdle) was written to be much harder to amend than most California ballot measures. > If Proposition 22 passes, could it be changed later? > It would be very difficult. Proposition 22’s text carries language that aims to block further legislative action targeted at gig companies. > If passed, amending it would require a seven-eighths supermajority of the Legislature — a daunting hurdle. > In California, a law created by ballot measure can be changed only by another ballot measure, unless the original measure specifies otherwise. Because it’s a hassle to push through ballot measures, initiatives will frequently waive this protection and provide opportunity for the measure to be amended by the Legislature. > A two-thirds majority vote is a common benchmark initiatives use. A seven-eighths majority requirement is unheard of. https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-10-19/prop-22-explained https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-10-19...
- resonantjacket5 5y ago
  Many other Californian ballot measures also have no waiver. Not saying prop 22 has no drawbacks, but there's no reason to make up fake reasons to criticize it.
  - foerbert 5y ago
    I'm not sure how this is a fake reason. "It's worse than most but not as bad as it could be" is not a bar that precludes criticism in my mind.
    - erik_seaberg 5y ago
      Most propositions are not trying to rein in a 3/4 majority after they already passed a bad bill the voters chose to undo.
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      It's a fake reason because it's not a flaw in the proposition. For Proposition 22 to be ruled unconstitutional based on its unusually-generous legislative amendment requirement, the ruling would have to state that the California proposition system itself is unconstitutional, because that system specifies a legislative amendment requirement that is much, much stricter.
DannyBee 5y ago
This mostly true as written, but confusing to most folks not into the esoterics of this, because it implies the legislature can do nothing. The legislature can't override it themselves, but they can submit it back to the voters: " (c) The Legislature may amend or repeal a referendum statute. The Legislature may amend or repeal an initiative statute by another statute that becomes effective only when approved by the electors unless the initiative statute permits amendment or repeal without the electors’ approval."
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  I'm confused by something in the judgment. (I) It's based on the idea of a conflict between (1) a constitutional grant of unlimited power to the legislature to "create and enforce a complete system of worker's compensation"; and (2) Proposition 22's specification that "an app-based driver is an independent contractor and not an employee or agent with respect to the app-based driver's relationship with a network company if [certain] conditions are met." (II) It states that independent contractors are not eligible for worker's compensation because, "as presently codified", California's worker's compensation law does not apply to independent contractors. (III) It then concludes that this language from Proposition 22 restricts the Legislature's constitutionally unlimited power "to determine what workers must be covered or not covered by the worker's compensation system". But up in step (II), there seems to be an explicit acknowledgement that the worker's compensation system could cover independent contractors if it wanted to. If the Legislature's unlimited power to create a worker's compensation system can be used to determine whether app-based drivers working as contractors are or aren't eligible for worker's compensation, how does restricting the Legislature's ability to determine whether app-based drivers are independent contractors or employees also restrict the Legislature's ability to determine whether they are covered by the worker's compensation system?
  - DannyBee 5y ago
    So your argument is about who could overrule who, but that is a secondary question. General rule of thumb, if the constitution says "x has complete the power to do y", and you aren't x, your attempt to do so is unconstitutional even if x could simply overrule you. At the federal level, you see this play out in things like the "dormant commerce clause" - States don't have the power to regulate interstate commerce. Sometimes they try in spaces where congress hasn't acted yet. Congress doesn't have to explicitly overrule them, they are simply unconstitutional in the first place. It's not your power to play with. You also see it play out in congress trying to regulate for the general welfare (a power reserved to states). In this case, if the constitution says "the legislature gets to decide who has workers comp", and they decided, and you attempt to adjust that, that's probably unconstitutional. The 100% normal thing that would happen is a court would sever it and say "to the degree the statute tries to adjust who gets workers comp, that part is null and void ". It's just that here, the statute explicitly says "if that provision is found unconstitutional, the whole statute should be struck down". So the court did. One side thing to keep in mind, because it often plays into these things later - when a court finds a statute unconstitutional, they are finding that it was always unconstitutional from day 0, not just moving forward. In such cases, it is considered "void ab initio" - it is like it never existed. So assuming this holds up, the next thing that will happen is a bunch of folks will then come and file cases about what they should have gotten in the intervening time period. (void ab initio in practice is becoming harder to manage, and arguably being moved away from, but ..)

Thats a bit misguided in interpreting the propositions. By default propositions cannot be override by the legislature, by adding the provision it was more amendable than normal.

AaronFriel 5y ago

Today I learned: https://ballotpedia.org/Legislative_alteration https://ballotpedia.org/Legislative_alteration It still seems like California's process is the least democratic. It allows voters of the past to institute laws that are much, much more difficult to change than other laws. The "Supermajority approval for ... years following" that North Dakota and Washington follow, or expiring the protection of the initiative from amendment automatically after some number of years seems appropriate.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
coliveira 5y ago
The US political system is full of anti-democratic laws. California is not the first and, unfortunately, no the last state to have such laws.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  If we're defining anti-democratic laws like this: > It allows voters of the past to institute laws that are much, much more difficult to change than other laws. then having a constitution is a pure exercise in anti-democracy. Are we calling that "unfortunate" now?
  - kergonath 5y ago
    Well, a constitution can be anti-democratic if it cannot be changed by the people. Loads of dictatorships and single-party oligarchies have undemocratic constitutions. In true democracies the constitution can be changed, and is regularly. So basically, being a democracy and having a constitution are orthogonal.
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      That is the opposite position to "having a constitution is anti-democratic", which is the position taken by AaronFriel's comment. > Loads of dictatorships and single-party oligarchies have undemocratic constitutions. Ehh... my impression was that the bigger problem, from a standard American perspective, is that loads of dictatorships have constitutions which are everything American evangelical democracy dreams of, but which they aren't too concerned with adhering to.
    - zajio1am 5y ago
      > Loads of dictatorships and single-party oligarchies have undemocratic constitutions. In many cases the issue is opposite. Many populist autocrats abuse democracies with constitution that can be changed too easily, so after one big win in election they can dismantle all checks and balances and independent institutions in the country.
azernik 5y ago
They're more difficult to change only in that they have to go through the same process by which they were instituted - a ballot initiative. The difficulty of repealing awful past propositions like Prop 13 is down to public opinion, not procedural limitations.
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
  Here we go again on Prop 13. If you lived through the madness, you would understand. (I can guarantee you were born after, I'm Mad as Hell!, by Howard Jarvis. Every year taxes went up. Every year politicians squandered away that money on pet projects. Middle class residents feared tax day. I saw my dad cry once, and yes it was when he opened that tax bill from the county. Prop 13 is the only real thing, in my lifetime, that truly helped the middleclass, and poor. Yes---things were generally better 30-40 years ago, but don't blame our messed up society on prop 13. Their are days where I feel we need to get rid of prop 13 for a few years, and let those that weren't born see what happens? I have never heard anyone who lived through that time criticize prop 13, with the exception of a college professor trying to reel in young students during a lecture, or an upcoming politician trying to get young voters. Instead of ragging on a prop that helps low/middleclass tax payers; I wish the young would go after how the wealthy around the world are buying up our homes. With a phone call, or email, and then have the gall to leave them vacant. To the young professional programmers. Let's be honest. You will be most likely shown the door around 50. If you happened to buy a house, you will eventually cherish prop 13.
  - pclmulqdq 5y ago
    In most places other than California, the problem of greedy politicians who raise taxes and spend the money on corruption and crap is to vote out the politicians. If you feel unsafe at tax time, your elected leaders should feel unsafe on election day. It's really telling that Californians instead passed a terrible market-distorting ballot measure (which incentives hedge funds to buy properties to avoid the tax being readjusted again and pushes up prices so that nobody other than a hedge fund could afford them). If you're worried about affordability of houses, prop 13 (combined with NIMBYism and restrictive zoning laws in cities) is one of the main reasons why they are unaffordable. It sounds like it didn't even register to Californians that maybe they should have voted for the other guy for a little while.
jonas21 5y ago
> It still seems like California's process is the least democratic. Did you mean the most democratic? California's process means the legislature can't override the will of the people -- only the people can do that, through another ballot initiative. I'm not saying it's necessarily a good thing, but California ballot initiatives are about as close to direct democracy as you can get.
- specialist 5y ago
  > Did you mean the most democratic? Insert sound of my head imploding. Even "democracy" is ambiguous. Representative vs direct vs participatory vs ... We have to consider more than just the voting method. Power relationships, structure of discourse, processes for modification, ad nauseum. My meager best effort at divining the core essence of "democracy" is "consent of the governed". Weak sauce, I know.
- MichaelZuo 5y ago
  It seems like the parent has an understanding of the term quite different from the norm.
  - RuggedPineapple 5y ago
    How? That's been the understanding for hundreds of years and derives farther back then even our own country. It has its roots in English constitutional law and the principle of Parliamentary Sovereignty, one of the main tenets of which is that no previous act is allowed to bind the hands of a future parliament, to do so thwarts the democratic will of the people expressed by who they chose to elect.
    - MichaelZuo 5y ago
      To clarify I mean this comment ‘It still seems like California's process is the least democratic.’ Which is a bizarre way of looking at referendums, as it would imply that referendums over the entire voting population are less legitimate than bills enacted by a representative body.
- 5y ago
renewiltord 5y ago
You mean “the most democratic”. It is direct democracy in rare instances to overrule the indirect democracy. The people speak and only the people can undo what they make.
pclmulqdq 5y ago
The interesting question is whether voters can pass laws that are straight up unconstitutional. The courts are an important check on the power of legislators, but if they don't apply to the people, there may be some really interesting ballot initiatives in the future. CA's ballot initiative process is democracy taken too far. It is close the point where democracy becomes the tyranny of the mob.
- arcbyte 5y ago
  It's a simple answer: they can't. The constitution lays out the process for accomplishing things that everyone "agrees" to by living under its jurisdiction. If you want to accomplish something unconstitutional, you can, you just have to first amend the constitution.
sokoloff 5y ago
The word 'democracy' has its origins in the Greek language. It combines two shorter words: 'demos' meaning whole citizen living within a particular city-state and 'kratos' meaning power or rule. It seems like a direct ballot initiative is no less democratic than an indirect representative making laws to govern the people. (I think it’s more, but it surely is not less.) You can say you don’t like a given initiative; it’s much harder to argue that the process is undemocratic.

commoner 5y ago

The standard is a two-thirds majority, so Proposition 22 (with a seven-eighths majority hurdle) was written to be much harder to amend than most California ballot measures. > If Proposition 22 passes, could it be changed later? > It would be very difficult. Proposition 22’s text carries language that aims to block further legislative action targeted at gig companies. > If passed, amending it would require a seven-eighths supermajority of the Legislature — a daunting hurdle. > In California, a law created by ballot measure can be changed only by another ballot measure, unless the original measure specifies otherwise. Because it’s a hassle to push through ballot measures, initiatives will frequently waive this protection and provide opportunity for the measure to be amended by the Legislature. > A two-thirds majority vote is a common benchmark initiatives use. A seven-eighths majority requirement is unheard of. https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-10-19/prop-22-explained https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-10-19...

resonantjacket5 5y ago
Many other Californian ballot measures also have no waiver. Not saying prop 22 has no drawbacks, but there's no reason to make up fake reasons to criticize it.
- foerbert 5y ago
  I'm not sure how this is a fake reason. "It's worse than most but not as bad as it could be" is not a bar that precludes criticism in my mind.
  - erik_seaberg 5y ago
    Most propositions are not trying to rein in a 3/4 majority after they already passed a bad bill the voters chose to undo.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    It's a fake reason because it's not a flaw in the proposition. For Proposition 22 to be ruled unconstitutional based on its unusually-generous legislative amendment requirement, the ruling would have to state that the California proposition system itself is unconstitutional, because that system specifies a legislative amendment requirement that is much, much stricter.

DannyBee 5y ago

This mostly true as written, but confusing to most folks not into the esoterics of this, because it implies the legislature can do nothing. The legislature can't override it themselves, but they can submit it back to the voters: " (c) The Legislature may amend or repeal a referendum statute. The Legislature may amend or repeal an initiative statute by another statute that becomes effective only when approved by the electors unless the initiative statute permits amendment or repeal without the electors’ approval."

thaumasiotes 5y ago
I'm confused by something in the judgment. (I) It's based on the idea of a conflict between (1) a constitutional grant of unlimited power to the legislature to "create and enforce a complete system of worker's compensation"; and (2) Proposition 22's specification that "an app-based driver is an independent contractor and not an employee or agent with respect to the app-based driver's relationship with a network company if [certain] conditions are met." (II) It states that independent contractors are not eligible for worker's compensation because, "as presently codified", California's worker's compensation law does not apply to independent contractors. (III) It then concludes that this language from Proposition 22 restricts the Legislature's constitutionally unlimited power "to determine what workers must be covered or not covered by the worker's compensation system". But up in step (II), there seems to be an explicit acknowledgement that the worker's compensation system could cover independent contractors if it wanted to. If the Legislature's unlimited power to create a worker's compensation system can be used to determine whether app-based drivers working as contractors are or aren't eligible for worker's compensation, how does restricting the Legislature's ability to determine whether app-based drivers are independent contractors or employees also restrict the Legislature's ability to determine whether they are covered by the worker's compensation system?
- DannyBee 5y ago
  So your argument is about who could overrule who, but that is a secondary question. General rule of thumb, if the constitution says "x has complete the power to do y", and you aren't x, your attempt to do so is unconstitutional even if x could simply overrule you. At the federal level, you see this play out in things like the "dormant commerce clause" - States don't have the power to regulate interstate commerce. Sometimes they try in spaces where congress hasn't acted yet. Congress doesn't have to explicitly overrule them, they are simply unconstitutional in the first place. It's not your power to play with. You also see it play out in congress trying to regulate for the general welfare (a power reserved to states). In this case, if the constitution says "the legislature gets to decide who has workers comp", and they decided, and you attempt to adjust that, that's probably unconstitutional. The 100% normal thing that would happen is a court would sever it and say "to the degree the statute tries to adjust who gets workers comp, that part is null and void ". It's just that here, the statute explicitly says "if that provision is found unconstitutional, the whole statute should be struck down". So the court did. One side thing to keep in mind, because it often plays into these things later - when a court finds a statute unconstitutional, they are finding that it was always unconstitutional from day 0, not just moving forward. In such cases, it is considered "void ab initio" - it is like it never existed. So assuming this holds up, the next thing that will happen is a bunch of folks will then come and file cases about what they should have gotten in the intervening time period. (void ab initio in practice is becoming harder to manage, and arguably being moved away from, but ..)