Analysis: Convoluted ballot produces 'a $25 million Rorschach test'

Sacramento Bee ^ | 5/20/9 | Kevin Yamamura

[SmithL]

Tuesday's slash-and-burn special election was a spin doctor's delight.

State lawmakers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asked voters to pass one of the most convoluted ballot packages in California history, an amalgam of controversial policies for the right and the left to pick over.

Fiscal conservatives and businesses said voters demonstrated they hate taxes. Social service advocates and labor unions said voters rejected spending cuts.

Even recreational marijuana supporters had a take. The Marijuana Policy Project said voters showed they want novel revenue solutions, like legalizing and taxing pot.

"These measures will end up being a $25 million Rorschach test," said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, referring to the psychological ink-blot analysis. "Everybody will end up seeing in the results what they want to."

The election's odd political alliances and garbled campaign messages made it difficult to determine which policy beliefs, if any, drove voter decisions. Californians delivered a message of general contempt, but didn't provide clear guidance to the Legislature on how to solve what is now a $21.3 billion problem.

While rejecting five of six measures, those who did show up at the polls punctuated their message by supporting Proposition 1F, a ban on legislative pay raises in deficit years.

Some said the Legislature and governor shouldn't have asked voters to help solve the budget problem. Others said the package was too complex or drafted in a deceitful way.

[Right Cal Gal]

And maybe, just maybe, we were smarter than the legislators gave us credit for and recognized a con-game when we saw it.

[teenyelliott]

Wonder how much they could save if they cut all funding for illegals, welfare, schooling, etc., AND discontinue all ESL programs. Deport all illegals in jails and prisons, too. Bet they'd save a pile.

Illegals are really the tipping point for that state, IMO.

[savedbygrace]

This is what passes for analysis at the Bee.

Arnold sure could have made things easier for them if he’d included an essay question as #7.

[OneWingedShark]

Exactly. I mean it’s like a doctor offering you the choice between stopping massive bleeding but introducing a malignant terminal cancer, or cutting out a malignant terminal cancer but letting you bleed to death.

Not an acceptable choice in the bunch.

[I am Richard Brandon]

So now the other 56 (sic) States can bail us out.

[Right Cal Gal]

Dining at Zero’s House of Stimulus is probably not looking so good right now to a lot of people in a lot of other states that didn’t need or take money.

I live in California, but I can tell you, if I lived in Montana and saw the way California ran itself and then were told MY money was going to help fix the problem, I’d be mad as Hades.

[SaraJohnson]

Voters were too stupid to understand the ballot measures...This is the running theme in the Party newspapers of California. Yes everyone is stupid except the liberals who have bankrupted California. Soon coming to a Nation near you.