TAKING THE INITIATIVE

Because it appears that Nevada has fulfilled Assemblyman Ron Knecht's
worst nightmare and truly become East California -- with the Golden
State's penchant for government-by-initiative -- it may be time to
ease in some reforms of the petition-circulating rules.

And no, that's not just limited to posting "please don't harass the
signature gatherers" signs in local DMV and state government office
buildings ... although that might not be a bad start.

Take the outdated, anachronistic rules for who must sign petitions and
where. Each petition must bear the signature of the person who passed
the document around, known as a "circulator." But each petition must
also bear the signature of a registered voter on an affidavit which
attests to the fact that everybody who signed the petition is also a
registered voter. Now, if the circulator isa registered voter in the
same county in which he's collecting signatures, he can meet that
requirement. If not, he's got to ask one of the people who signed the
petition to sign the affidavit, too.

Got that?

The rule, which is in the state constitution (time to amend! somebody
get an initiative going!), is cumbersome and unnecessary. There should
be a requirement only that the circulator sign and attest that the
people who signed his petition are registered voters, to the best of
his knowledge. County clerks and the secretary of state are going to
check whether the people who signed the petition are really registered
to vote, anyway.

And it's not as if this is a totally academic issue. The
Review-Journal reported on Wednesday that thousands of signatures were
tossed out on several petitions for failure to comply with the
circulator/affidavit requirements. Petitions seeking to legalize an
ounce of marijuana and to bar frivolous lawsuits failed to qualify,
although one advocating rolling back auto and homeowner insurance
rates made it. Another effort -- to raise Nevada's minimum wage by $1
per hour over the federal standard -- failed to qualify but is now the
subject of a court hearing in Carson City.

And such is the way of things when the people take the business of
governance into their own hands. It's not that direct democracy is a
bad thing -- sometimes the people have to act when the government
won't -- but it's not a silver bullet, either.

For example, how many people will discover that the insurance rollback
measure, a popular cause on its own, would eliminate caps in medical
malpractice cases adopted by the Legislature in 2003? (Exceptions to
that $300,000 cap would themselves be eliminated under yet another
initiative, filed by doctors, that will also appear on the November
ballot. So we've now got initiatives stealthily amending other
initiatives.)

How many people will stop to consider that voting yes on the
initiative which calls for funding public schools at the national
average could result in hefty tax increases or severe (non-school)
budget cuts, especially if yet another initiative to roll back the tax
increases approved at the 2003 Legislature gets on the ballot and
passes? How many voters will unknowingly create budgetary chaos by
voting for both the national-average funding and the tax rollback?

Not many people will understand the "education first" initiative,
which requires the Legislature to pass the education spending plan
before any other. That's mostly because the measure wouldn't really do
much to change the way things work in Carson City, although its
backers say it would prevent lawmakers from spending money on pet
projects, leaving school funding until the end and then claiming they
need a tax increase to pay for it.

Assuming it qualifies, the initiative to ban public employees
(including local government workers and employees of universities and
school districts) from serving in the Legislature will essentially
repeat the words of Article 3, Section 1 of the state constitution.
But since nobody seems to be following Article 3, Section 1 of the
state constitution anyway -- and since the state Supreme Court
maintained in a ruling Wednesday it is powerless to review the matter
- -- a little repetition is definitely in order.

But you've also got to consider the fact that simply passing an
initiative isn't the end, but the beginning. There are the court
fights and federal government to deal with! The feds wouldn't care if
the marijuana-legalization measure passed; they'll still very likely
arrest people found in possession of the drug. (California legalized
medical marijuana, and that doesn't stop the Drug Enforcement
Administration from ripping up fields planted with pot and putting
distributors in the dock in federal court.)

And Nevada's own Supreme Court simply set aside another popular
initiative -- requiring a two-thirds majority in the Legislature to
raise taxes -- when it became inconvenient in 2003. That rancid
decision still stands despite challenges all the way to the U.S.
Supreme Court.

With all the confusion, maybe it would be for the best if we passed an
initiative to ban all future initiatives. Now, where again are we
supposed to sign?