Fellow FlashReport contributor Jim Lacy, in blog post below this one, makes the case for why legislation that has suddenly “popped up” to change the way elections to take place so that election day no longer the cutoff for voters to have their ballots received by the County Registrar of Voters, but instead becomes the last day that an absentee postmarked. Jim is spot on.
But I feel compelled to augment Jim’s observations by addressing the “gaming of the system” by the majority party with regards to this bill. My first issue, which unfortunately is not an uncommon one, is that this bill is a classic case of the use of what is referred to as “gut and amend” where an unrelated bill that has already been vetting through policy committees and advanced through the normal process is stripped of its original language, only to have this new language inserted in its place. Using this process, transparency and outside involvement in the legislative process are thrown out the window. There is no notice of the bill. There are no policy hearings where policy area subject experts are brought to give their expertise. It’s just “dark of the night” game-playing by the legislature.
If that is not enough, we already saw how earlier this summer legislative Democrats drove a Mack-truck-sized hole through Proposition 25’s majority-vote budget provisions by taking policy items that really have no legitimate nexus to the budget, putting in some minor financial hook, and calling it a budget trailer bill subject to a majority vote. This was done with a bill to re-order ballot measures for November that should have required a 2/3rds vote but by this sort of trickery it went through on a majority vote.
That said, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is current before the Court of Appeals making the case that Prop. 25 does not allow such an end-run on non-budget related policy items. I hope that the same judge hearing that case takes note of this “ongoing breach” as the same thing is being done with this elections-related bill. It has been labeled as a “budget trailer bill” (never mind that the budget was adopted already) and declared a majority-vote bill. And for what reason? (You could pass this on a majority vote.) This is an end-run on the 2/3rds requirement for any “urgency” bills that would take place immediately. They are trying to pass this stealth bill, changing the way elections work, as a budget trailer bill, so that it will go into effect in the election to beheld in less than three months.
Shame on Capitol Democrats who continue to run this state as a single-party dictatorship.