One of the best ways I have found to sort out convoluted or misleading ballot initiatives is simply to look up who gave the most money to each side, since the vast majority of them are proxy battles for some powerful interest or another. Rare is the proposition that is a truly grassroots nonpartisan effort, and even those by definition create winners and losers when they pass.

So why not take disclosure laws to the next level, and print a short list of the major contributors to candidates and initiatives right underneath the rest of the voter info on the state voting guide? it wouldn’t add more than a couple pages at best, and would be a lot more salient information than the argument/rebuttal section, invariably done by some group calling themselves Californians for Truth, Goodness, Tax Fairness and Free Ponies.

Putting it online in some searchable database is nice, but the media doesn’t cover it, and most citizens don’t have the goddamned time to search through all that stuff. They’ve got jobs to do. Putting a brief summary of who is behind each campaign would give the average busy voter some idea of what’s being fought over and who the sides are, and it would undermine the effectiveness of the massive corporate and special interest spending on initiative campaigns.

originally at surf putah