Prop 38: No
“Immunology and Immunotherapy Research Funding Initiative”
Look, man, I like not dying of cancer as much as anyone, and this is crafted to make you think it’s a basically benign thing. But this particular proposition is fucked to within an inch of its life by exactly the thing that is fucked about the proposition system as a whole. As CalMatters explains, “the billionaire co-founder of the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy, Gary K. Michelson, is one of the two ultrawealthy chief backers of Proposition 38,” and his institute stands to get most of the money you’re being manipulated into telling the state to borrow weirdly specifically on his behalf.
That’s an incredible return on investment, if the tens of millions that Michelson and entities with his name on it spent on this proposition come back with $4 billion in state funding. And who knows, it might, because by the time you, a voter, get to this point in the ballot, it’s easy to say “Sure, immunology? Sounds good. Sure.”
Fundamentally, we should not be voting on something this specific, complicated, and misleadingly crafted.
Oakland Review of Books
Here’s a confession: For years, I voted “NO” on every single proposition put before me. I didn’t even read them. I just voted “NO” all the way down, creating a beautiful dotted line straight through the right side of my ballot. I never read the props. I never researched them. I learned nothing about them and developed no opinions on them. It was simple and beautiful.
And it was probably the wrong move, but it came from a kind of right place. What I probably should have been doing is not voting because that’s the responsible thing to do when you are willfully ignorant about a ballot item. Instead, my father and I decided that this two-person protest vote was the smart play, back when we could still discuss politics, before he retired, before I could vote, before I became too afraid to ask him questions like you do understand that what’s happening in Gaza is a genocide, right?
I forget which proposition set my dad off, but at some point during my junior high and high school years, he decided to vote “NO” on every single proposition on principle. The principle was simple: The California proposition system is inherently flawed. There is no reason the average voter should be tasked with voting on complicated legislation they need weeks of study to understand properly. This is why we have legislators!
My father had a wine-soaked stump speech he’d trot out for guests that at the time felt not only persuasive but also fun (and I do remember there was a period where talking about politics had the potential to be fun or at least not dire). The California proposition system, he’d say, had done one useful thing, which was to break up the railroad monopolies. Ever since then, it has been used for evil. In 1978, Prop 13 permanently gutted public school funding under the guise of protecting seniors; in 1994, Prop 187 (unsuccessfully) attempted to enshrine xenophobia and racism in the state by creating a system to exclude undocumented immigrants from using public services; in 2008, Prop 8 (again, unsuccessfully) attempted to ban same-sex marriage.
(Is it even true that the proposition system broke up the railroad monopolies? I googled it just now, started to read an academic article about the history of direct democracy in California in the twentieth century, and then realized it makes my head hurt the same way learning what malevolent political stalemate is forcing Californians to figure out how to vote on something whose official description is crafted to deceive them.)
At some point in the twenty years since I’ve been able to vote, I started voting yes on propositions. I am an adult now. I can’t remember which one pushed me over the edge—probably one of the many tax measures meant to compensate for Prop 13’s violence—but voting has sure gotten really fucking annoying since I started being responsible again. I have to do so much research, so many googles and seven different voter guides in different tabs and checking them against each other, all because I don’t want to be willfully ignorant.
I don’t want to feel like I shouldn’t vote. But any system that requires “good citizens” to learn and decide about things that can’t be revised through normal legislative channels is setting citizens up to fail. Any system that can be exploited by the wealthy and powerful to trick citizens into voting against their own interests through relentless, contradictory messaging—as with this, or 2020’s Prop 22—is setting citizens up to fail. Any system that gives state assembly members who are supposed to represent citizens an excuse not to put their name on things or fight for good laws through legislative channels is setting citizens up to fail.
Anyway, definitely vote NO on this piece of shit.
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