With the attention of the world understandably focused on the presidential race during the recent American elections, few people will have studied the smaller democratic battles being fought across the United States at the same time. Not only were voters in the fifty states electing a president and a new Congress, but also governors, state legislators, mayors, school board representatives, property appraisers and even judges. On top of that, voters were also being asked to make decisions on an array of local ballot initiatives covering a diverse range of issues.
Periodically, ballot initiatives are prescribed by UK policy wonks as an off-the-shelf remedy for political disengagement. But anyone contemplating such an idea would do well to look at the initiatives on the ballot in some US states this year, and to think again.
Take Florida as an example, and consider this puzzle. Advocates of Amendment 4, the most fiercely contested of 2004’s Florida ballot initiatives, ran adverts saying ‘For better schools, vote YES to Amendment 4’. Opponents countered by urging voters to ‘End cruelty to greyhounds – vote NO on Amendment 4’. What on earth could Amendment 4 actually be about?
Take some time to think about that one. In the meantime, consider some of the other initiatives on the Florida ballot.
‘Don’t sidetrack Florida’s future – Vote NO on Amendment 6’, said one advert alongside a picture of a train. What am I actually voting for here? Am I for or against the train? For it, apparently. Amendment 6, which was passed by a two-to-one margin, had the effect of repealing an earlier ballot initiative, which obliged the state government to pursue the construction of a high-speed train line between Miami and Orlando. Initially attracted by the idea, Florida voters were subsequently put off by the $30bn price tag – something that the original initiative failed to mention. And because of the procedure whereby such policies are mandated by inserting unusually specific clauses into the state’s constitution, a further ballot initiative was required to secure the repeal of the first. So yes to Amendment 6 meant no to the train.
Back to Amendment 4. What was it about again? Better schools? Greyhounds? A television ad casts a little light, but not much. ‘Florida’s slot machine industry is worth $750m a year, but currently pays no tax. If we taxed slot machines, we could raise up to $500m a year for our public schools.’ Sounds great. But really? $500m in tax from a $750m industry? Something doesn’t, add up here. More on that later.
Other initiatives on the 2004 ballot, rather than being mind-bogglingly confusing, merely presented ethically uncomfortable choices. Take Amendment 3, a successful amendment backed by the Florida Medical Association and opposed by Florida trial lawyers, which proposed limits on lawyers’ fees in medical liability cases. Asked to choose between greedy lawyers and incompetent doctors, the voters sided with the medics. But don’t worry that trial lawyers might starve as a result. Although they lost that one, they succeeded in getting two of their own self-serving amendments approved – opposed, of course, by the Florida Medical Association. Given the choice on these three amendments, voters would probably have voted for patients instead of lawyers and doctors – but that option wasn’t on the ballot.
This demonstrates just how easy it is for organised interests to hijack the ballot process for their own sectional advantage. Although the procedure is notionally intended to empower ordinary citizens, few of them in practice have the resources required to mount a campaign. By contrast, interest groups have both the money and the manpower needed to get a question on the ballot and to run a successful lobbying operation. Often these campaigns will be disguised as grassroots movements in an attempt to obscure the real motives of the initiative and to win popular backing. The result is an embarrassingly low level of popular awareness of the issues concerned and often – as in the case both of the high speed train and the medical malpractice amendments – contradictory expressions of public opinion.
Which brings us back to Amendment 4 again. Where exactly was the $500m for schools coming from? Not just from taxing slot machines as the amendment’s proponents suggested, but also from having more of them, because the amendment would also result in the deregulation of slot machines in a number of counties. And where would all of these slot machines be situated? At race tracks! So that’s where the greyhounds come in.
As far are organised interests are concerned, Amendment 4 was an even more egregious example than the medical malpractice initiatives. On the one side, the teaching unions had jumped into bed with the gambling industry in the hope that deregulation of gambling would result in more money for schools and bigger pay rises down the line. And on the other side, the Christian right, rather than running a moralistic campaign against gambling, decided to co-opt the animal rights lobby. Greyhounds, they hoped, would get people more worked up than slot machines, which despite accounting for 80 per cent of the gambling industry’s revenues, seem less threatening to the voters than seedy, neon-lit casinos. Both lobbies comprised unholy alliances from opposite ends of the political spectrum, and both conspired to keep the electorate ignorant of the real issue under consideration.
As a form of entertainment, Florida’s ballot initiatives are worth every penny spent on them. But as an exercise in democracy, they are a disaster – voters become bemused spectators rather than active participants, while the political process is captured by special interests. This is one American import we should avoid.