Because we all voted in the recent election, it is going to take a lot more signatures to put initiatives and constitutional amendments on the California ballot over the next four years. The number of signatures required is a percentage of the votes cast for Governor.
This will be good for people who make their living collecting signatures, but perhaps discouraging to tech billionaires who promote vanity measures.State law links the number of voter signatures required on an initiative or referendum to the total number of votes cast in the most recent election of a governor. The threshold for qualifying a measure was at its lowest point in decades for elections in 2016 and 2018, after record low turnout in 2014 for the reelection of Gov. Jerry Brown.
... Unofficial election tallies show initiative campaigns will need to collect 620,439 valid signatures for statutory measures appearing on the November 2020 ballot — compared to just 365,880 signatures the past two election cycles. Constitutional amendments will go from needing 585,407 valid signatures to requiring at least 992,702 signatures.L.A.Times, December 8, 2018
In general, I believe that when costs are lower, we find ourselves voting on too many matters of which we know little and on which an informed vote would be require information most of us don't have time to acquire. Pulling and hauling over relatively small interests should be resolved through the legislature. We pay our representatives to learn this stuff so we don't have to.
Public issues with wide constituencies will still find the wherewithal to get on the state ballot; I don't fear we'll miss much.
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