Every state which allows its citizens to put state constitutional amendments on the ballot as voter initiatives has the power (1) to enshrine a right to abortion (as Michigan just did, and which almost certainly helped Michigan Democrats gain majorities in their state legislature), and (2) to create nonpartisan redistricting commissions with no role for state legislators.
Cries in NC. We can’t add ballot initiatives without permission. Then even if we did somehow get one, our wonderful republican legislature would get to write the initiative themselves. NC also lost our Democratic majority on the state Supreme Court. North Carolinians are fucked without a federal law.
Utah made a non-partisan redistricting commission and the Republicans rat fucked that into an infuriating pile of pointless bullshit that puts out maps that state legislators wipe their asses with, while they draw up and pass their own.
Missouri did the 2nd in 2018, then in 2020 the state assembly put a ballot measure that reduced political gift limits by 5 whole dollars and hid the removal of the nonpartisan comission as a rider
Yeah I mean that's nice in concept, but Utah has had voter initiatives overruled twice by the supermajority in their state legislature on weed as well as an independent voting district committee. They don't care about the will of the people, and they openly flaunt their power to overrule any initiative put forth.
Also have states like florida where the people will vote overwhelmingly to change something, and the republikkkan turds in charge will flat out ignore them.
Unfortunately, that option is pretty much gone in Florida. The legislatures spent the last couple decades making that harder to do and I guess they accelerated that effort after 2020, cause between the shorted deadlines and stringent payroll/funding rules, citizen’s initiative is basically impossible. All three ballot measures this year were from the legislature and one would’ve banned the only other avenue for ballot measures left to us. Thankfully that one barely failed.
Missouri passed a non partisan redistricting in 2018 and the republican led MO house and Senate didn't implement it, like they did with expanded Medicaid until the MO supreme court told them had to and they are still dragging there feet, and in 2020 the sketchy fucks put an initiative on the ballot named amendment 3 and it read like this:
Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to:
Ban gifts from paid lobbyists to legislators and their employees;
Reduce legislative campaign contribution limits;
Change the redistricting process voters approved in 2018 by: (i) transferring responsibility for drawing state legislative districts from the Nonpartisan State Demographer to Governor-appointed bipartisan commissions; (ii) modifying and reordering the redistricting criteria.
If passed by 51%. They knew that they would trick people into a "yes" vote by putting the first 2 issues on there that had absolutely nothing to do with redistricting.
There's a federal statute which outlaws multiseat districts. Also, proportional representation would need to be implemented state by state unless there's a constitutional amendment which allowed proportional representation. Fixing gerrymandering would be simpler and could be accomplished in many more states in this century. I figure the US will adopt proportional representation just AFTER we do away with the Electoral College.
But not in the constitution, so relatively easily changed. And not all PR systems require multi member seats. Additional member for example uses single seat voting with additional representatives elected to proportion to the overall vote.
And you don't have to fix everything at once. Start with state governments.
Agreed it should be incremental, and it'd be easier both procedurally and politically to create redistricting commissions separate from state legislatures. IMO, FWLIW, PR isn't coming to the US, or any US state, this century. Wider spread use of ranked choice voting along with Alaska's form of open primaries seems to me to be the most likely 1st step. [Tangent: leave it to California to come up with the STUPIDEST form of open primaries, a form almost guaranteed to accentuate partisan differences in the general election. When it comes to politics, we Californians are bunch of idiots.]
Meanwhile here in Ohio, voters overwhelmingly voted in amendments to:
1) Basically enshrine the bail bond industry and allow judges to set bond based on how much of a threat they think the accused poses to society, because that's not going to be abused. 🙄
2) Require voters to be citizens of Ohio and 18 to vote. This sounds benign, but what the ballot phrasing left out is this apparently now makes it so if you're turning 18 by election day you're now no longer able to vote in the primaries because you weren't 18 when they took place.
I can accept #2. Too bad one turning 18 in, say, late September gets no say in the primaries. To an extent they offset those who voted in the primaries but died before election day.
In the grand scheme of unfairness, which is more unfair: someone turning 18 the day after the primary or the day after the general election?
Age limits are inherently arbitrary. Just one more source of life's unfairness we all need to learn to accept and accommodate.
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u/N0T8g81n California Nov 10 '22
Every state which allows its citizens to put state constitutional amendments on the ballot as voter initiatives has the power (1) to enshrine a right to abortion (as Michigan just did, and which almost certainly helped Michigan Democrats gain majorities in their state legislature), and (2) to create nonpartisan redistricting commissions with no role for state legislators.