Proposition 87 & Ballot measures & Campaign finance & Election results 12 Nov 2006 10:13 pm
Ballot measures and defying expectations
The biggest news about the slate of propositions on he California ballot this year was that there were quite a number of expectations defied.
None of the big infrastructure measures fell. In fact, most passed with comfortable margins. The conventional wisdom was that voters were going to be too wary of big-ticket spending to give the measures their okay. The other conventional wisdom was that there was just too much information to absorb about all of the infrastructure measures. The thinking seemed to be that all of the measures would cancel each other out.
On the other hand, none of the other measures on the ballot did well — except for Proposition 83, which never had any significant opposition. The two biggest-ticket measures, Propositions 86 and 87, failed at the polls by significant margins. The parental notification and eminent domain measures, Propositions 85 and 90, which were both expected to pass, failed as well.
Dan Morain of the Los Angeles Times, who covered the money side of the ballot measure campaigns, pointed out in a November 9 article that in almost all of the campaigns, the side with the most money to spend won. In the case of Proposition 87 alone, both sides spent more than $150 million, making the alternative energy initiative by far the most expensive ballot measure in US history.