While the presidential election and key Senate races are getting most of the attention this week, voters are also weighing in on hundreds of ballot measures around the country. Too often, the short summaries of initiatives, bond measures, and tax hikes appearing on ballots are not fully informative and sometimes are deceptive. Politicians and bureaucrats who criticize companies for misleading commercial advertising seem unconcerned with the fact that consumers in their role as voters are also being fooled. Deceptive ballot language has been especially problematic in California, which pioneered direct democracy but now struggles with the effects of one-party state government. Partisan attorneys generally write state ballot titles that please the dominant party and its special interest group supporters, while litigation aimed at making the ballot language more accurate is rejected by the state's courts, whose judges are most often politically aligned.
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Table of Contents
- While the presidential election and key Senate races are getting most of 1
- Deceptive ballot language has been especially problematic in California 1
- Nonprofit media outlet CalMatters reported on this phenomenon in 2020. 1
- Among the questionable ballot labels it cited was the one for that yearʼs 1
- Proposition 15 which would have raised commercial property taxes by 1
- Increases Funding for Public Schools Community Colleges and 1
- Local Government Services by Changing Tax Assessment of 1
- Commercial and Industrial Property 1
- When the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association HJTA sued over the 1
- This year California is seeing a similar dispute around Proposition 5 which 2
- Allows local bonds for affordable housing and public infrastructure 2
- The HJTA sued over this language as well but an appellate court upheld 2
- Misleading ballot language is not limited to California. In Ohio Citizens Not 2
- Politicians a progressive group obtained enough signatures to place 2
- Issue 1 on the November 5 ballot. If passed the measure would replace a 2
- The Ohio Secretary of State titled Issue 1 on ballots as follows 2
- To create an appointed redistricting commission not elected by or 2
- Citizens Not Politicians sued but was largely unsuccessful. Although the 2
- Ohio Supreme Court agreed to make some changes to the more detailed 2
- In Ohio like California courts defend elected officialsʼ discretion to mislead 2
- Los Angeles Countyʼs Department of Consumer and Business Affairs 2
- Department says that a retailer cannot say Now through Saturday only 2
- 1.99 when the productʼs retail price is 1.99 and will thus continue to be 2
- But companies violating these standards are not lying outright so how are 2
