How I plan to vote (CA, 2018)

Photo by Elliott Stallion on Unsplash

The Ballot

In California, the most “interesting” state-wide election would probably be the Senate race between the two Democrats: incumbent, Dianne Feinstein, versus the more “progressive” candidate, Kevin De’Leon. I view it as more interesting because it isn’t a completely partisan decision.

This won’t go over my view on these candidates, cause I can’t do justice to it in an abridge manner. If I’m going to go to vouch for someone publicly, than I want to vouch for all of what they stand for, not just one issue.

With most of the state-wide races on the ballot, I tend to ask friends who I trust about who they’re voting for, so if you want my opinion on those, ask!

I did publicly come out against Trump. I did that, though, not because of the issues that he stood for (as much as I may disagree with some of them), but because of his character:

I wanted to vote for Trump, but I couldn’t

I will say this, though. Let’s bring about this Blue Wave, particularly in the House. Not so much because I believe that Democrats are necessarily better, but because we need some checks on this President. If the Democrats win the House, than we can have some real investigations into the President’s actions, instead of the sham investigations happening right now. Now, on to the ballot props!

Ballot Propositions

I’m not particularly a believer in ballot props as a form of legislation. It doesn’t allow for the crafting of legislation through hearings and feedback from various stakeholders. It’s one group/person’s vision that then becomes law.

This is why I wasn’t a supporter of the marijuana ballot prop last election, because as much as I support the idea of legalization, I didn’t think that was a good piece of legislation :\. So, I am for very simple ballot propositions. Anyhow, let’s take a look at what’s on CA’s state-wide ballots this time around.

Most of my research came from:

The quickest nonpartisan voter guide for the midterms

TLDR (Summary)

1. YES on Prop 1: not the best solution to our housing problems, but it will still help some people who are worth helping.
2. YES on Prop 2: housing is as important as mental care for the mentally-ill homeless population.
3. NO on Prop 3: state-wide props should serve the entire state + there should be public accountability for public funds.
4. YES on Prop 4: mainly cause infrastructure is hard to plan for with annual politicized budget allocations, so a bond may suffice for this need.
5. NO on Prop 5: we should get people to move using a stick, not a carrot.
6. NO on Prop 6: a usage based infrastructure tax sounds good to me.
7. YES on Prop 7: I don’t like randomly forcing my body to wake up at a different hour twice a year 😆.
8. NO on Prop 8: yes we should regulate dialysis clinics more, but this might do the opposite
9. YES on Prop 10: more about giving power back to the cities to institute rent control if they want to (this doesn’t force them to do so).
10. YES on Prop 11: we want EMT’s to be paid during breaks, so that they actually come to us when we need it.
11. YES on Prop 12: more because there should be an agency actually enforcing our laws + more clarity on existing laws is a good thing

Prop 1: $4B for housing

I don’t think this does enough to even start meeting our state’s housing shortages nor does it tackle that particular problem all that well. I’d want to support laws encouraging higher density zoning more than helping people with their loans.

Why? Increasing loan assistance is saying that people are close to being able to afford their homes, so with just a little bit of help, we can increase demand. But, the thing is that our state’s problems have more to do with supply than demand :\.

My other quandary here is that we’re taking on debt. I know a healthy debt load is okay, but just generally against it when possible.

This one definitely isn’t very cut and dry for me. It’s great that they’re trying to solve a real problem, but is the cost benefit for this worth it? So, my leaning is 55/45 on this one…

I plan to vote: YES

Prop 2: part of Millionaire’s tax towards housing the mentally-ill homeless

There’s already a 1% income tax on those making more than $1 million annually and it’s already being used towards mental health services for the homeless. This prop just allows part of those funds (currently <10%) to also be used for housing.

I am all for this. I am a proponent of treating the whole person and housing is an important factor in helping the mentally-ill homeless population.

I plan to vote: YES

Prop 3: $8.9B for water projects

There are two parts of this that don’t sit well with me. One is the canal repair in Kern County. The damage occurred because local agribusinesses took out too much groundwater. Why should we pay $750M for that? If they damaged it, they should pay for it.

Much of the previous water bond passed in June went towards urban and coastal water problems, but I think that’s what a state-wide prop should go towards → to where the vast majority of the state’s voters are.

Second is that our legislature has no say in how the money gets spent, with just an independent audit required every 3 years. Yes, those who spend this may not want politicians keeping tabs on this money, but if it’s funds allocated by the public, the public should have more insight into it.

I’m sure that some good would come of this, but the state legislature should be able to pass any part of this that is good for us.

I plan to vote: NO

Prop 4: $1.5B for children’s hospitals

Man, there are a lot of bond measures this year. I just generally don’t like taking on debt when possible. But with infrastructure, unless there’s a direct pay for (like a tax, which would be difficult to pass), it’s hard for entities to plan without consistent funding.

I plan to vote: YES

Prop 5: give elderly property tax incentive to move

I’m not for this because I don’t think we should give these people another path to keeping low property tax assessments. Yes, it could incentive people to move, but what I’d rather do is to amend Prop 13 (which led to these low property tax assessments) so that there is a bit more market value factored into property tax assessments.

This would be in the realm of something I’d support: if the tax assessment value is less than 50% of market value, then the county accessor can raise the value by 20% instead of 2%; less than 80%, able to raise by 10%. Not sure about the exact numbers, but something like that.

If someone bought something 30 years ago, and now property values are 5 times what they were, shouldn’t mean they don’t pay the localities in a similar manner as everyone else. If they don’t need the services of that locality, than they should move elsewhere.

So yeah, no more benefits to these people and let’s get them to move using other measures, not by helping them more.

I plan to vote: NO

Prop 6: gets rid of last year’s gas tax bill

So, a gas tax bill passed last year, which raised $5B for transportation projects. So, voting yes on this prop means we get rid of that law; voting no on this prop means that we keep it.

I definitely see this as more of a usage fee, meaning, that the more people use something, the more they pay for it. Though, it is a bit uneven with electric vehicles not paying for gas and also some cars being more gas efficient. Even with those caveats, I’m all for infrastructure spending. We need ways to pay for it on a consistent basis, so a more usage-oriented tax like this works well for that.

I plan to vote: NO (keep the law)

Prop 7: no more Daylights Savings Time

Hah, I am for this because I don’t like abruptly changing my wake up time randomly twice a year. Our bodies naturally get used to the changing sunrise/sunset times throughout the year, and I don’t think we need Daylights Savings just randomly changing it. It’s also just less logistics to deal with AND I’m not a morning person, hah.

I plan to vote: YES

Prop 8: limit dialysis clinic revenue

Man, I’m conflicted on this one because I don’t think that dialysis clinics are incentivized to provide good care. The statistic that here in the US, we spend the most on dialysis care, but have the highest mortality rates — that pisses me off.

So, though my desire is to regulate dialysis clinics more, the implementation here with a revenue cap would likely be counterproductive. It could lead to less profitable clinics closing (and patients having to go further for care) OR these for-profit companies figuring out ways to increase the cost for care, which would then lead to increasing costs to us, the taxpayers. 90% of dialysis care is done through Medicare and Medic-aid/al, which are funded by taxpayers.

Another likely outcome would be higher wages for workers, since that would also increase the cost of care. This makes sense, since this prop was brought onto the ballot by a labor union.

Again, I do want to regulate dialysis clinics more, but this prop is an ineffective means to regulate them, with potential backfires of actually helping some clinics out.

I plan to vote: NO

Prop 10: allows for rent control

The policy of rent control itself can be argued both ways, but the reason that I support this is that it gives power back to the local governments. This prop doesn’t force cities to institute rent controls, but just gives them the power to do so.

I’m a proponent of localizing power where it makes sense and I think rent control would be one area where it’s easier for localities (cities) to figure out if it would be good for their city or not.

Rent control is trying to solve the housing problem here in CA, but it probably isn’t the best remedy for it. However, cities should still have the option of trying it, since they may have a harder time changing zoning laws with NIMBYism being so strong.

I plan to vote: YES

Prop 11: gives EMT’s (ambulance) paid breaks

The provisions in this prop should be a given. EMT’s should be paid during breaks since we want them to be on-call during those so-called breaks. We, as a society, want ambulances to show up as soon as possible, so we should incentivize that. Just a minute or two could serve huge differences in health outcomes.

I do dislike the provision giving immunity to ambulance companies, but the way I see it, it’s the compromise that was reached to get this to the finish line. I’m okay with that…if anything, our political system needs a little more compromising these days.

I plan to vote: YES

Prop 12: actually sets minimum space requirements for some farm animals

So, this isn’t so much a new law, as much as its adding specificity and a governing entity (+ a cage-free requirement by 2022) to an existing proposition. So, this prop is not so much about whether you like the law, but more about whether you want better enforcement of an existing law.

It sounds like new provisions because it does add clarification to existing laws. If we were voting on the provisions in a standalone manner, I’m not 100% sure I would support this. I do feel that market forces would have led most farmers to choose this route eventually anyhow, so I don’t particularly mind nudging them earlier.

But my main support for this prop comes down to requiring the CA Dept of Food and Agriculture to actually enforce this law. Any law without enforcement is…kind of useless.

I plan to vote: YES