Prop 14, Maldonado’s jungle primary law, is getting pulled in all sorts of directions over the last few days.  As mentioned in the open thread last night, CSEA filed suit to change the ballot title and summary, claiming that the language as written by the Legislature was biased.  Thing is, everybody in the Legislature, except Maldonado, hates Prop 14.  Rather than spending their own resources to fight the legal battle, they simply agreed to settle the case. Here’s the complaint (PDF).

Now, however, Arnold wants to intervene in the lawsuit, saying that the Legislature is just trying to kill the measure with the settlement.  Boo-hoo, poor Arnold. Unsurprisingly, the Legislature wasn’t really down with the attention that they were getting, so Leg Counsel wrote a letter supporting Arnold’s intervention in the lawsuit (PDF).

Thing is, the ballot title and summary are really ridiculous.  First, the measure went outside of the normal process. Instead of going through the AG’s office, the Legislature itself wrote the summary and title.  While the AG process occasionally results in somewhat favorable titles to left-leaning initiatives, and not so good titles for right-leaning measures, there is always some relation to a provable reality. In other words, there is concrete facts that the AG can point to for his interpretation.  But check out this monstrosity:

ELECTIONS. PRIMARIES. GREATER PARTICIPATION IN ELECTIONS. Reforms the primary election process for congressional, statewide, and legislative races. Allows all voters to choose any candidate regardless of the candidate’s or voter’s political party preference. Ensures that the two candidates receiving the greatest number of votes will appear on the general election ballot regardless of party preference. Fiscal Impact: No significant net change in state and local government costs to administer elections.

“Greater Participation in Elections”? What they didn’t want to name it the Mom’s Apple Pie Measure? Or was that already taken?

Fact is that Prop 14 won’t really make much of a difference in how the Legislature works. It will simply favor more “establishment” candidates that can raise a bunch of money to horde media time. So, if you’re looking for a not all that less partisan, but way more corporatist government, well, Prop 14 is for you!

Otherwise, it’s a heaping helping of confusion, played up by goo-goos that haven’t really spent much time looking into how the system actually plays out in reality.