Our View: The state Supreme Court correctly ordered Prop. 60 to be split into two.

By: North County Times - Editorial | Tuesday, August 10, 2004 9:25 PM PDT ∞

The California Supreme Court made the correct decision Monday in ordering Secretary of State Kevin Shelley to split Proposition 60 into two parts on the Nov. 2 ballot, to be called Propositions 60 and 60A.

Several issues are at play here ---- which is one reason why the Supreme Court ordered that Prop. 60 be split in two. But it's even more complicated because Prop. 60 was put on the ballot to counter Prop. 62, the open-primary initiative.

Let's untangle this snarl.

Under California's electoral system, in partisan primary elections (that is, primaries in which political parties are involved; many elections for municipal offices, for example, are nonpartistan) the top vote-getters for each political party advance from the primary to the general election.

Prop. 62 would change that. If voters approve it, then only the top two vote-getters in a partisan primary would advance to the ballot in the general election ---- no matter what party they represent. Theoretically, Californians could see two Democrats or two Republicans contesting an office in Novembers to come.

Prop. 60 would block that, and permit each qualified party to put its nominee on the November ballot.

Now it gets complicated.

Under the California Constitution, if voters approve two conflicting propositions, only the proposition with the higher number of Yes votes takes effect.

So even if voters pass both Prop. 60 and Prop. 62, only one of them will become law ---- the one with the most votes.

Now it gets more complicated and simpler at the same time.

Prop. 60, as proposed, had a second clause in it: that if the state sells any of its "surplus" property (and the state owns billions of dollars worth of such property) the proceeds from the sales must be used to pay off the principal and interest on the Prop. 57 bonds. (In March this year, at the urging of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, voters approved Prop. 57, which authorizes the state to issue up to $15 billion in bonds to finance past budget deficits.)

Obviously, the two major clauses in the original Prop. 60 are unrelated. And the state constitution requires that ballot initiatives and propositions be limited to single items. The reason for this is so that lawmakers, or initiative-writers, will not, in effect, bribe voters to accept a distasteful proposition by including a tantalizing gift or two along with it. (For instance: Make me governor for life and I'll abolish the state income tax.)

For Prop. 60, the surplus property item was the tantalizing gift. It's a way to show voters how the state can pay off its enormous debt more quickly.

We will leave aside for now the question of whether Props. 60, 60A or 62 are good ideas. What's clear is that the original Prop. 60 violated the single-item requirement, and that the second clause of Prop. 60 could be interpreted as a de facto bribe to voters, in the interest of seeing that Prop. 60 outpolls Prop. 62.

That's why the Supreme Court made the right call. Voters should choose between two primary systems on their merits ---- not on the merits of one against the merits of the other one plus a sweetener.