This is interesting and exactly the sort of consideration I was worried my anecdote-based feelings could miss. A bit of googling suggests to me that there is some evidence in favor of increased spending correlating with significant changes in ballot measure outcomes (I’ve heard it’s more uncertain with electoral politics).
If it’s true that the ballot initiative failures were just a funding issue rather that a broader reflection of the electorate’s willingness to support, I think that’d be a big deal, and maybe an argument in favor of investing more in this work.
Also, side note — I’m really surprised that there was such weak opposition to Prop 12, especially given the costs to industry and the fight it’s put up since then. It makes me wonder of Ballotopedia missed anything here.
I’m of the opinion EAs are underutilizing ballot/voter initiatives. This is something I plan on writing up on the Forum at some point. (If anyone is interested in exploring voter initiatives as an intervention, please reach out)
The veto of SB 1047 should also raise the salience of ballot initiatives in EA.
I think one of the most compelling cases is using voter initiatives for political system reform.
The short argument is that a large portion of EA has bought into policy as high EV because the high-leverage impact more than compensates for the hits-based nature of it. However, upstream of policy is politics. Generally, the problem is not a lack of solutions but a lack of political will. Yet, even upstream of politics is the political system which creates the selection effects for who gets into office and the incentives that act on them while in office.
Political system reform, while more challenging to quantify, theoretically has very very very high ROI because you are addressing the coefficient of a coefficient acting on policy.
However, legislators have proven resistant to changing the rules of how they got to power. Hence, prominent people/organizations in the money-in-politics and electoral reform space have opted to use ballot initiatives to circumvent the legislature.
In the US context, I am curious how tractable mail-in ballot reform is. This was passed in Arizona in 1991 and Colorado in 2013, although I’m unsure what the progress looks like at a large scale.
This is interesting and exactly the sort of consideration I was worried my anecdote-based feelings could miss. A bit of googling suggests to me that there is some evidence in favor of increased spending correlating with significant changes in ballot measure outcomes (I’ve heard it’s more uncertain with electoral politics).
If it’s true that the ballot initiative failures were just a funding issue rather that a broader reflection of the electorate’s willingness to support, I think that’d be a big deal, and maybe an argument in favor of investing more in this work.
Also, side note — I’m really surprised that there was such weak opposition to Prop 12, especially given the costs to industry and the fight it’s put up since then. It makes me wonder of Ballotopedia missed anything here.
I’m of the opinion EAs are underutilizing ballot/voter initiatives. This is something I plan on writing up on the Forum at some point. (If anyone is interested in exploring voter initiatives as an intervention, please reach out)
The veto of SB 1047 should also raise the salience of ballot initiatives in EA.
I think one of the most compelling cases is using voter initiatives for political system reform.
The short argument is that a large portion of EA has bought into policy as high EV because the high-leverage impact more than compensates for the hits-based nature of it. However, upstream of policy is politics. Generally, the problem is not a lack of solutions but a lack of political will. Yet, even upstream of politics is the political system which creates the selection effects for who gets into office and the incentives that act on them while in office.
Political system reform, while more challenging to quantify, theoretically has very very very high ROI because you are addressing the coefficient of a coefficient acting on policy.
However, legislators have proven resistant to changing the rules of how they got to power. Hence, prominent people/organizations in the money-in-politics and electoral reform space have opted to use ballot initiatives to circumvent the legislature.
In the US context, I am curious how tractable mail-in ballot reform is. This was passed in Arizona in 1991 and Colorado in 2013, although I’m unsure what the progress looks like at a large scale.