Ballot Access for Tax Initiatives: How Hard Should It Be?

Since the rise of the "direct democracy" movement in the early 20th century, the use of ballot initiatives and referenda has spread like wildfire around the nation-- for better or for worse. It's prompted questions (although probably not enough) about what sort of policy issues ought to be decided via direct democracy rather than by elected representatives.

And now, in Nevada, it's prompting interesting and vital questions about whether proponents of a ballot initiative should be able to show a baseline level of statewide support for an proposal before it's put on the ballot. What's prompted this debate, as the Las Vegas Review-Journal's Sean Whalley tells us, is a new law that does just that:

The law requires people to gather a set number of signatures in each of Nevada's 17 counties based on the population of each county to qualify a measure for the ballot. In the last election cycle, all the signatures needed could be collected in just one urban county.

The idea behind such a reform is that urban and rural interests in Nevada are likely to diverge radically in a way that might make it easy for urban taxpayers to gang up on rural taxpayers.

Interestingly, Whalley tells us, this isn't the first time Nevada has tried to implement this sort of rule:

The previous requirement for Nevada petitioners was to collect signatures representing 10 percent of those who voted in the previous general election in 13 of 17 counties.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that requirement, however, saying it violated the constitutional principal of "one man, one vote" by allowing a small number of voters in a sparsely populated county to preempt the wishes of the majority.

Nevada lawmakers have tried to respond to the Court's concerns this time around by applying separate signature requirements for each of the state's counties, and weighting each of the county-specific requirements by the voting population:

The new formula requires signatures to be collected based on 10 percent of Nevadans who voted in the previous general election multiplied by the percentage of a county's share of the statewide population.
To determine the number of signatures required in Clark County, for example, the 10 percent who voted in the 2006 general election totaled 58,627. Multiplied by Clark County's share of the total state population, which is about 69 percent according to the 2000 census, the number of signatures needed in Clark County is 40,364.
Using the same formula for Lincoln County, the 10 percent of the vote in 2006 would be multiplied by .2 percent, the county's share of the state population, making the signature requirement would be 122.

The result is that any ballot initiative must show some baseline level of support in every county around the state.

If this seems anti-democratic, that's because it is--and that's OK by me. Virtually every governmental institution we've got at the federal or state level is designed to take us a step or two away from direct democracy. Remember all that stuff you learned in high school civics about preventing the "tyranny of the majority"? That's a big part of our republican (small R) form of government.

Of course, it's important to have an avenue for regular voters to take their case directly to the people, but it's also important to make sure that any such effort truly has widespread support. And in an age when ballot initiatives have increasingly become a tool of well-heeled corporate interests, this is absolutely a goal for which voters should have some sympathy. Nevada's latest change to its ballot access rules may not put the ballot back in the hands of the people, as the populist advocates of direct democracy envisioned a century ago, but it will very likely prevent the ballot box from being used as a weapon by one county against another. And it helps ensure that the ballot initiatives that ultimately make it into the polling booth each November will be well-thought-out and defensible.

Does Gibbons' "No New Taxes" Pledge Still Work?

Around the nation, electorates are growing increasingly skeptical of lawmakers who make unconditional promises never to raise taxes. But, to hear some Democratic activists tell it, rural Nevada is not one of those places:

Longtime Lyon County Democratic Party Chairman Charlie Lawson said without question Gibbons appeals to most rural Nevadans.
"His no-tax stand is his anchor," Lawson, a resident of Stagecoach, said in a phone interview. "Most folks out here will live and die on no taxes. Not just Republicans. Democrats, too."
Democrats can make gains in rural Nevada, he added. But only if they also wander regularly into the hinterlands and emphasize they also oppose taxes -- except when they are needed to resolve a specific problem, such as a lack of roads.
"People will favor some taxes if they get a direct benefit from them," Lawson said. "They have to be informed of the reason for the taxes."

This doesn't mean, of course, that Gibbon's tenuous (to describe it politely) hold on his no-new-taxes pledge flies statewide, either from a political or a policy perspective. Anyone who remembers Gibbon's off-the-cuff ideas for avoiding tax hikes earlier this year probably has a better sense of how quickly such an allegedly "principled" stand can force you to make indefensible policy plans.

And even the "anti-tax" perspective provided here provides a helpful road map for lawmakers seeking to adequately fund public investments-- they just need to be very clear about what they'd like to do with the money. An obvious lesson, perhaps, but one that's worth restating: anti-taxers gain most of their support by pretending that tax revenues don't buy anything-- that taxes are simply poured down a hole in the ground. The more lawmakers can remind the public of all the good stuff their taxes are paying for, the more likely they are to receive public support when they need tax hikes to keep funding these things.

Review-Journal Advocates Property Tax Repeal

Discussing the latest effort to bankroll an anti-property-tax ballot initiative, the editorial board at the Las Vegas Review-Journal comes up with this doozy:

[W]hy should those who buy real property with after-tax dollars then have to pay additional "rent" to their local governments indefinitely? It's interesting to note how the political class recoiled with horror at that portion of last year's eminent domain initiative that would have declared property rights "fundamental rights." Can we be taxed for exercising a "fundamental right"?

This argument-- that property taxes are simply illegitimate on their face-- isn't one you hear that much anymore, and it's almost shocking to see it in writing. So it's worth taking the opportunity to respond to the R-J's questions.

1) The implication of using the phrase 'after-tax dollars' is two-fold: first, that every dollar you spend has already been taxed once, and second, that taxing each dollar of income exactly once is both desirable and attainable. And this is all pretty contestable. In a non-income-tax state, it's hard to see how anyone can comfortably assert that Nevada has already taxed each dollar of income once. And if they're referring to the fact that the federal income tax is already in play, the R-J clearly hasn't thought through the implications of not allowing different levels of government to tax the same dollar. Does the existence of a Nevada state sales tax mean that local governments should not be allowed to tax the same transactions?

2) If you own a home, then your federal, state and local governments are, right now, spending money making sure that no one robs it (or bombs it) and that it won't burn down. Owning a home imposes costs on government that need to be paid. The property tax is based on the (quite reasonable) principle that if the government is protecting your home from all the bad stuff that might otherwise happen to it, you maybe ought to pony up a little bit to defray the costs-- with the condition that if the costs exceed your ability to pay them, you should get some help.

3) Property is created by government. If all governments disappeared tomorrow, the whole concept of "property" would lose its meaning because there'd be no legal system left to enforce it. But government can't exist without taxing something that someone considers their "property." In other words, there simply can't be an absolute right to property. If the right to property is absolute, it's a meaningless and unenforceable right.

I don't know enough about the R-J's editorial board positions to know whether they're really serious about this position, or whether it's a tossed-off one-liner that isn't worth the trouble of rebutting. But rhetoric aside, it's astonishing that anyone would even jokingly assert that property taxes are wrong.

Review-Journal: What, Me Worry (About Clean Elections)?

Property tax caps are in the news once again in Nevada, with an effort underway to put a clone of California's Proposition 13 on the November 2008 ballot. But populism ain't what it used to be: the signature gathering drive that's getting underway to put the proposed tax cap on the ballot is being financed by, well, one person. A single $200,000 donation (identity unknown) represents, all by itself, about half of the money that is needed to buy enough signatures to get on the fall '08 ballot.

In an August 1 editorial, the Las Vegas Review-Journal's editorial board derisively quotes Democratic Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley's opposition to this subversion of democracy: "Why do we need to come up with another measure that some out-of-state financier wants to import to Nevada?" Their response:

[Tax cap proponent Sharron] Angle isn't saying where the $200,000 check came from, but blaming "out-of-state ideas" always sounds good. We await Ms. Buckley's renunciation of such out-of-state ideas as seat belt, motorcycle helmet and draconian DUI laws.

This is almost too absurd to waste time on, but: there's a big difference between out-of-state ideas and out-of-state money. Ideas can be debated on a level playing field. When ideas are stupid, they can get shot down. But a suitcase full of fifties can tilt the playing field in favor of even the dumbest idea by giving it a prominent place on a ballot, where it can be described in an oversimplified way designed to fool the electorate. But forget about the ideas v. money distinction-- if it turns out that some fat-cat resident of another state is simply buying a spot on Nevada's November 2008, that's reprehensible on its face, and the folks at the Review-Journal should recognize this for the distortion of democracy that it really is.