Got my voter information guide, time to go through it! I’m going through everything in the official voter information guide and everything Ballotpedia says is on my ballot; I’ll make a new post when I get my official ballot and can research more local races and propositions.
First, the easy picks. Biden for president, Khanna for District 17 Representative, Becker for State Senate district 13, Berman for State Assembly District 14; they’re Democrats running against Republicans, no further logic needed here.
I guess I’m not going to vote for anyone for Superior Court of Santa Clara County (Office 24), because there’s only one person running (Stuart Scott) and internet tells me he’s got some abuse of power allegations about him. Seems minor, but I think I’ll put in a protest-vote write-in here. He’s running unopposed and I haven’t found any indication that anyone has a write-in campaign, so he’ll win anyway.
Next, I’m voting for Otto Lee for Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors District 3 . Back during the primary, Lee and Chu were my top choices and I could not find anything to distinguish them, and now they’re the two finalists. I think this time I’m going to vote for Otto Lee, since it seems that he’s being more highly recommended by more of the local Democratic clubs, especially South Bay Yimby. When in doubt, the YIMBY slate is my go-to for local races, since housing is the most important local issue in California.
Propositions!
Yes on Prop 14. This proposition authorizes some money for medical research, specifically stem cell research and neurological diseases — 5.5 billion, spread over at least 11 years. Based what happened with the previous similar prop (Prop 71 in 2004), a majority of this money will go to California universities, with a mix between the UCs and private universities. Supporting both California universities and medical research for a decade seems to me to be worthwhile.
Final test — why is this a proposition and not just passed by the legislature? Because of California’s stupid rules about requiring propositions for big bonds.
Yes on Prop 15. Starts fixing a bit of the screwed up property tax code, for large businesses (tax them on actual value of property instead of purchase price). Raises money, improves the tax code, does not affect renters or homeowners or small businesses, no downsides here, and lots of upside. Super-important to vote yes on this one.
Final test — why is this a proposition and not a law? Because of Prop 13, which makes everything to do with the property tax code have to go through propositions.
Yes on Prop 16. This would repeal the ban on affirmative action policies here in CA. It’s hard for me to judge from reading the letter of the law whether it would be a step in addressing systemic racial injustice or not, since it’s repealing a ban on particular policies instead of actually enacting specific policies, but it’s supported by groups who would know, such as NAACP. The endorsements basically line up as a party-line votes (D for R against), so yes is my call here.
Final test — why is this a proposition and not a law? Because it’s repealing a previous proposition.
Yes on Prop 17. Restores voting rights to people on parole. Yes, of course yes. All American adults should have the right to vote, period.
Final test — why is this a proposition and not a law? Because voting rights are the sort of thing that should be in a constitution.
Yes on Prop 18. Allows 17-year-olds to vote in a Primary if they turn 18 before the General election. I’m on the fence on this one — I can see the argument that 17-year-olds might not be independent enough to cast independent votes. However, it’s definitely the case that we need to encourage more youth involvement in the political process rather than less, and it’s true that plenty of other states have done this and it’s been fine. And in general, I think there’s a much lower bar for expanding the franchise than restricting it. So I’m voting yes.
Final test — why is this a proposition and not a law? Because voting rights are the sort of thing that should be in a constitution.
Yes on 19. OK, now we get to a Prop that is confusing fuckery that is not easy for me to understand. It permits some people to “transfer their primary residence’s property tax base value to a replacement residence” more easily, which is a horrible sentence I wanted never to read, because the “property tax base value of a house” should not be a goddamn financial asset to move around, but it already is so that’s not new here. However, the benefits this proposition expands are limited to people who are old or whose house was destroyed by fire or are disabled; those benefits already existed, this just expands them a bit, allowing it to be used to move anywhere in the state (fine) or to move to a more expensive home (ehh…) or used multiple times in life (ehhh…). And that’s what it leads with; in the fine print, it says it “limits tax benefits for certain transfers of real property between family members”. Reading the details, it appears to significantly narrow the rules for inheriting property tax base rates — would only apply to primary home or farm, not for anything else, and would allow the taxable value to go up if the real property value exceeds the taxable value by 1 million. Oh, and to wrap it up, the proposition makes it so the new funds go to fire protection.
So, my reading of it — this is a proposition to restrict the ability to inherit low property tax values, especially low property tax values on multiple homes or mansions, which is good. “Low property tax rate on second home” is not something that should be inherited in the first place. The prop authors sandwiched that in between a minor increase in the ability to pass around low property tax values for seniors and people with disabilities, and extra funding for fire protection, so that the campaigns about this can claim to be about “increased protection for seniors” and “fire protection”. Bullshit marketing, but I think the prop overall is a benefit.
Final test — why is this a proposition and not a law? Because of Prop 13, which makes everything to do with the property tax code have to go through propositions.
No on 20. This decreases the eligibility for parole for various nonviolent offenses, increased penalties for theft (including felony charges for some thefts over $250). Oh, and it expands DNA collection. Yeah, this is a terrible idea. Felony convictions for shoplifting is not something we need. Violent criminals can already be denied parole and early release: this prop simply expands the list of people who are ineligible. Our society is already over-prisoned… and I just can’t get past that felony convictions for shoplifting bit. So. Bad. No on this prop, heck no.
Yes on 21. Amends a ban on rent control to allow rent control on properties older than 15 years, instead of properties older than a fixed date (1995). Seems reasonable. It does not mandate rent control, just allows communities to enact it. Not really a solution; rent control is a bandaid to the lack of housing, not an actual long-term fix, but bandaids are what we can get, I guess. If we had a vibrant housing market where housing could be built to match demand, I’d be against rent control; but rent control is not the cause of California’s problems with housing, and until those are resolved rent control can help prevent evictions.
Final test — why is this a proposition and not a law? Because housing is such a horrid crisis here that I feel I have to accept any progress even if it’s not perfect.
No on 22. I don’t want to get into the weeds of how exactly to classify independent drivers vs employees. I really don’t. Why is this detail up for a vote? Because Uber and Lyft didn’t like how AB5 did it, and so they want to repeal it, and have more funding than the the No campaign by a factor of 20. So now I have to look over AB5 and compare to Prop 22 and see which one makes more sense. I looked over AB5 and it seemed reasonable to me — someone who’s a “contractor” has to be doing work on their own, outside the usual course of the company’s activities, otherwise they’re an employee and should get standard employee benefits. It honestly makes sense to me that a company whose whole business is providing rides to people should, um, employ drivers. (AB5’s criteria would have, in hindsight, reclassified some software dev “contractors” as employees at the last startup I worked at. Correctly, IMO, so that’s a plus. But maybe not, because there’s a million exceptions to it, so who knows.)
Nor sure what I can conclude from the various endorsements/opposition to Prop 22. All the app-contractor companies are for it of course. For some reason the police chiefs and sheriffs associations are for it? Good reason to vote no on it, I suppose. Or maybe that’s just the ones Ballotpedia chose to highlight.
Warren’s opposed, and she knows her stuff. Not sure how closely she pays attention to CA props, though.
Oh, and Prop 22 has a provision where it now takes a 7/8ths majority for the legislature to pass anything about app-based rideshares. Come on, guys. It already takes a supermajority to pass basically anything.
Ugh. I don’t like Prop 22. I don’t like propositions that create requirements for legislative supermajorities for anything to be done. I don’t like it when companies buy ballot propositions to overturn laws they don’t like, and I don’t like Uber’s habit of ignoring laws they don’t like and daring governments to enforce them. I also don’t like the social pattern where instead of the government providing things like healthcare and UBI, they shove all that into employment law instead. But I guess the only one actually on the ballot is that first one. So No on Prop 22.
No on Prop 23. This prop would require a licensed physician on-site at outpatient dialysis clinics. And other things. That seems like a bad idea to me — if there’s a safety issue, legislate the safety standards, not “require a doctor to stand around there”. It seems like it would raise costs without addressing the core issue — if there is one, which the Yes side doesn’t make a good case for. And requiring doctors to stand around when they’re not needed seems like a tactic to deliberately raise costs while pretending to be about safety, similar to what conservatives often do to restrict abortion rights. The main supporting organization of the prop is the workers union (not, say, doctor or patient advocates). Why is the workers union so adamant about needing a doctor on-site? Why is this a proposition and not just a regular law? Is this just an extension of the workers-versus-employers fight, except taking place via a ballot proposition that pretends to be about safety? No on 23.
No on Prop 24. So, this is an interesting choice. The proposition seems, generally, fine. Increases privacy protections for people when dealing with online companies, regulates sale of data, etc. It has detractors — there’s a claim that it would create a “pay for privacy” racket.
But I think it fails the “why should this be a proposition” test. The guy sponsoring the proposition previously had one in 2018 and withdrew it after negotiations with the Legislature to pass a similar bill (California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018) instead of proposition. Fine, great, that’s the legislative process working ok. Sponsor-dude thinks there should be more privacy protections. OK, maybe that’s the case, though the arguments for the proposition don’t make a strong case for why the CCPA didn’t go far enough. But as part of his rationale for the proposition, sponsor-guy mentions “The only thing I want to make sure is they can’t undo the act.” So basically, the point of making this a proposition is explicitly to tie the hands of the legislature in the future. And to do so with a complicated law with lots of tradeoffs that there’s really no way for me to evaluate fairly.
In my opinion, this is terrible. California ALREADY has the issue where far too many topics can only be touched by Propositions. (Property tax law. Government raising money via bonds. Sentencing and prisons. Uber’s trying to add app ride-shares to that list.) Privacy law is not in that list yet. Let’s keep it that way. This is a textbook example something that might be a fine idea that should go through the legislature, just like it did a few years ago but doesn’t need to be a proposition.
Yes on Prop 25. This approves a law the legislature passed to remove cash bail and replace with a system based on public safety risk. This is backwards because voting YES on the Proposition upholds the law as it currently exists, whereas NO is the option that would repeal it, instead of No being the status-quo choice. The top donors to the No campaign are the bail bond companies.
Overall, this *would* be pretty straightforward but for one issue — the current SB10, apparently, has a computer risk-assessment scheme. And having read about the AI behind how those work, those are also horrid trainwrecks. Still, progress compared to “the wealthy pay their way out”.
More to come when I get my full ballot — based on the SCCDP endorsements slate I got, I’ll have 16 more local positions/propositions to research.
Comments welcome! I’ve got another week or so until I can both get my ballot and fill it out and mail it in.
