Under AB5, a truck driver delivering orange juice is treated differently than a truck driver delivering milk. AB5 is trash.
Either way, Article 11 of Prop 22 has a severability clause. If they take away the 7/8th supermajority clause, it shouldn't affect the rest of Prop 22.
A constitution that allows a 7/8ths supermajority clause is fertile ground for corrupt and insane laws like AB5. A party in Congress with a slight majority can pass a law that will be forever practically impossible to change. They effectively forced in a constitutional amendment.
This is a clear example of how the unions really control California.
Sorry to interrupt your soapbox, but the law passed with the 7/8 supermajority clause was Prop 22 - which was loudly and explicitly opposed by the unions "who control California" and who supported the original AB5 law that it superseded.
It’s worth mentioning that many props don’t allow the legislature to override them period, even with a unanimous vote. The 7/8ths rule, while unusual, is less extreme than not allowing any vote at all. It’s essentially an “oops we drafted the prop wrong and accidentally banned wages” get out of jail free card.
In addition to the other reply, the supermajority clause can only be added to ballot propositions not legislation from the legislative (california doesn't have a Congress).
And it's actually a good thing, without that clause it would be totally impossible for the legislative to amend or repeal the proposition.
> And it's actually a good thing, without that clause it would be totally impossible for the legislative to amend or repeal the proposition.
This boggles my mind about initiatives in California. In other states with popular initiatives, the People pass laws on the same footing as the Legislature; they just do so through the ballot box. The elected Legislature still has the authority to modify those same laws (though most states require a "cooling off" period of a year or two before a passed initiative can be modified, and even then a supermajority in the Legislature can still do it).
A popular initiative being sacrosanct and inviolable absent a second initiative seems wrong to me. Why does a populist law get to stand more firm than one passed by the elected representatives of the people?
> A popular initiative being sacrosanct and inviolable absent a second initiative seems wrong to me. Why does a populist law get to stand more firm than one passed by the elected representatives of the people?
65% of Floridian voters chose to restore voting rights to felons; the Florida legislature chose to add additional restrictions to that restoration that were not in the original proposition, effectively preventing the restoration that Floridians had chosen.
I think the whole initiative process is horrible. But.
Your answer is right there in the declaration of independence: "to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed". Rather than going through the legislative process, the idea is that some things should be decided by the people directly.
The original intent of ballot initiatives (propositions) was to try to nullify special interest power over the legislature. If you think AB5 was special-interest legislation (it very clearly was) this might be the exact intended use of the ballot initiative process. For the popular vote to nullify what the special interest-controlled legislature wanted. And it worked.
An entirely separate question is what kind of questions should be decided by direct democracy in the first place. I think California goes too far in this regard, but I don't think the right answer is "none". Regardless of one's political beliefs, I think something on the scale of Brexit was put to the electorate in a direct vote, and probably with reason.
The problem is that California very frequently gets into situations where there's a legislative supermajority on the opposite side of the issue from the general public. Just this cycle, AB5 passed the Assembly with 76%, and ACA 5 (the subject of Prop 16) passed with 81%. If the legislature were allowed to repeal ballot propositions, they'd do it in a heartbeat, and the will of the voters would not end up being expressed.
Direct democracy = popular vote, representative democracy = elected representatives.
China, Russia, USA, France and Switzerland are all republics: two are dictatorships, two are representative democracies, and one is a direct democracy. Canada, UK, Japan and Belgium are all constitutional monarchies, and all of them are considered democratic. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are monarchies, but certainly not democratic.
Democracy is a scale, probably better used as an adjective: the more democratic, the more power is wielded by the people.
It's not a terrible idea for a law by referendum to require a higher legislative bar for repeal, as other replies have pointed out. But you do bring up a good point. Maybe the supermajority requirement should phase out after a certain number of years (in addition to a cooling off period).
> Why does a populist law get to stand more firm than one passed by the elected representatives of the people?
Because the people only vote once in two years and the reps vote all the time. Because the people need to collect 50k signatures and usually more and the reps need zero. This is obvious.
>And it's actually a good thing, without that clause it would be totally impossible for the legislative to amend or repeal the proposition.
This is only partially true. Props are not amendable or repealable by default, but the 7/8 majority is a completely arbitrary and an unprecedentedly high burden to put on this. It is so high that it basically only exists so that people can argue that it is technically amendable or repealable while it being nearly impossible in practice. Prop 22 could have easily set a more reasonable cutoff like 2/3 even 3/4.
It's worth point out that AB5 passed 61-16 in the state house, a 79 percent yay vote. So with your proposed 3/4 supermajority it could still be overruled by the legislature. And of course this means 2/3 is even less of a hurdle.
AB5 versus Prop 22 is not a binary choice. It is possible to work on compromises between the two and not everyone who voted for one would inherently be against the other and vice versa.
Also in the legislative world there is a huge difference between 61-16 and what would be a 68-9 requirement to meet a 7/8 cutoff. The goal for these cutoffs should be to make it difficult to achieve, not practically impossible.
Sure, if you want to be pedantic. However the specific 7/8 number was unprecedentedly high compared to numbers used in previous propositions to the extent that it probably shouldn't have even been included in a honest piece of legislation.
Why? That objection is surreal -- you're taking the position that there's nothing wrong with a 101% threshold, and there's nothing wrong with a 70% threshold, but an 88% threshold goes too far? Too far in what direction? "Numbers you can mention aloud in polite company"?
> you're taking the position that there's nothing wrong with a 101% threshold, and there's nothing wrong with a 70% threshold, but an 88% threshold goes too far?
That wasn't my position. My position is that a 88% threshold in practice might as well be 101% and it is dishonest to include it and pretend like it is the near equivalent of 70%.
My comment on the pedantry was mostly on the fact that a lack of threshold is a null value and not equivalent to 101%. A null value is not larger than 88%. This 88% value is higher than previous propositions that have included a threshold and is therefore "unprecedentedly high".
Either way, Article 11 of Prop 22 has a severability clause. If they take away the 7/8th supermajority clause, it shouldn't affect the rest of Prop 22.
Edit: Looks like the California Supreme Court has denied their petition - https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/03/ca-supreme-court-denies-la...