Friday, October 17, 2008

NO on 9: A Bad Constitutional Amendment

The first red flag is that Prop 9 is a constitutional amendment. If it has any unintended consequences, changing it later would require a 3/4 vote of the legislature (more than passing the state budget!). No matter how bad the problem, it would probably never get fixed. So you should only vote for this if you're confident it is perfect.

Prop 9 doesn't need to be passed by initiative. Crime victims get very respectful hearing in the state legislature. So they don't need to pass this as a constitutional amendment, by initiative. They could get what they want through the legislature, unless it is really crazy.

Prop 9 repeats a lot of laws already on the books in California. That's not a huge harm, but it usually indicates an initiative writer who doesn't know what they're doing or is trying to hide something by combining it with a bunch of provisions people will agree with. Notably, most of the "victims' rights" cited by proponents already exist in state law. So why pass a constitutional amendment for them? No good reason.

Prop 9 "fixes" problems that don't exist. California's parole system is already very strict.
Prop 9 will further overload our prison system. California prisons are already so overcrowded, we have federal judges taking over the prison medical system. We've already got mandatory sentences and lots of other limits on any discretion in the criminal justice system. Let's not make it worse.

If there are any merits to this measure, they should go through the legislature, because we won't be able to clean up all the mistakes in this one.

Check out what others think:
Vote NO on 9 to stop a bad constitutional amendment.

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