Help me decide on these Michigan proposals

[civvver]

We got pot, gerrymandering and voter registration laws! A lot of interesting stuff! And I am undecided on two of them.

Proposal 1:
A proposed initiated law to authorize and legalize possession, use and cultivation of marijuana products by individuals who are at least 21 years of age and older, and commercial sales of marijuana through state-licensed retailers

This proposal would:

• Allow individuals 21 and older to purchase, possess and use marijuana and marijuana-infused edibles, and grow up to 12 marijuana plants for personal consumption.
• Impose a 10-ounce limit for marijuana kept at residences and require amounts over 2.5 ounces to be secured in locked containers.
• Create a state licensing system for marijuana businesses and allow municipalities to ban or restrict them.
• Permit retail sales of marijuana and edibles subject to a 10% excise tax, dedicated to implementation costs, clinical trials, schools, roads, and municipalities where marijuana businesses are located.
• Change several current violations from crimes to civil infractions.

Should this proposal be adopted?

[ ] YES

[ ] NO

I really have no idea how to go on this one. I've listened to radio interviews of people for and against. Supposedly drug arrests in colorado have remained about the same, so legalizing pot hasn't really helped out minority convictions as much as people hoped. I've also heard that total impaired driving has gone up. But on the other hand it seems good for revenues and alcoholism is down.

Proposal 2:
A proposed constitutional amendment to establish a commission of citizens with exclusive authority to adopt district boundaries for the Michigan Senate, Michigan House of Representations and U.S. Congress, every 10 years

This proposed constitutional amendment would:

• Create a commission of 13 registered voters randomly selected by the Secretary of State:
  - 4 each who self-identify as affiliated with the 2 major political parties; and
  - 5 who self-identify as unaffiliated with major political parties.
• Prohibit partisan officeholders and candidates, their employees, certain relatives, and lobbyists from serving as commissioners.
• Establish new redistricting criteria including geographically compact and contiguous districts of equal population, reflecting Michigan's diverse population and communities of interest. Districts shall not provide disproportionate advantage to political parties or candidates.
• Require an appropriation of funds for commission operations and commissioner compensation.

Should this proposal be adopted?

[ ] YES

[ ] NO

This proposal is very difficult because it's written into the constitution, so hard to repeal if it sucks, and random registered voters? They might not be remotely qualified to do the redistricting and when selected by the secretary of state I don't know how much faith I have in them being totally random. But I do like the idea of just drawing big squares on a map to make districts instead of the mess we have now to keeps parties in power. And all the big business republicans hate this proposal which makes it all the more attractive to me. However there aren't details on the appropriation of funds for the commission. Like how much money do they get to do this?

Proposal 3:
A proposal to authorize automatic and Election Day voter registration, no-reason absentee voting, and straight ticket voting; and add current legal requirements for military and overseas voting and postelection audits to the Michigan Constitution

This proposed constitutional amendment would allow a United States citizen who is qualified to vote in Michigan to:

• Become automatically registered to vote when applying for, updating or renewing a driver's license or state-issued personal identification card, unless the person declines.
• Simultaneously register to vote with proof of residency and obtain a ballot during the 2-week period prior to an election, up to and including Election Day.
• Obtain an absent voter ballot without providing a reason.
• Cast a straight-ticket vote for all candidates of a particular political party when voting in a partisan general election.

Should this proposal be adopted?

[ ] YES

[ ] NO

This seems like a no brainer yes to me. Why aren't you automatically registered to vote anyway? Voting shouldn't be burdensome.



All info from here:
https://www.mlive.com/expo/news/erry-2018/10/c906e5e38b2805/a-complete-guide-to-michigans.html

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I'd vote yes on all 3.

 

[rah]

1. Yes for many reasons. Enforcement of the prohibition of such has usually been more of a burden to minorities. Might as well have the state profit vs the current model. And I've always thought the public health argument is silly when booze is legal.

2. Not sure if this is the best method but better than it being totally political so YES

3. Yes, doesn't need much.

At least you get meaningful things on the ballot. In Illinois they limit how many can be on so they can jam meaningless ones on to avoid the two that a majority of citizens in the state actually want. Term limits and similar to your number 2.

 

[civvver]

I'd vote yes on all 3.

Reasons? I am leaning that way as well and all 3 have big leads in polls.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Reasons? I am leaning that way as well and all 3 have big leads in polls.

1. Prohibition doesn't work and needs to end. I don't like some of the provisions of this particular proposition (Really - you have to lock up your cannabis at home? And how's that going to be enforced?) but overall it's still a big step forward.

2. Gerrymandering needs to die in a fire. It's a perversion of the system no matter which party does it and systems like this are needed to stop further gamification of our electoral system.

3. Voting should be as easy as practical as a matter of principal. This proposal is a big step in the right direction.

 

[Commodore]

The randomly selected thing is what would make me ultimately vote no on number 2. Random selection rarely produces good results. Jury duty and conscription being two examples I would point at to demonstrate the idiocy of random selection.

 

[schlaufuchs]

Proposal 2 is very similar to California's prop 11, which was passed in 2008 and has been very successful at eliminating gerrymandered districts from our state.

Here's how the selection process works:

In November 2008, California voters passed Proposition 11, authorizing a state redistricting commission.[1] The Bureau of State Audits (BSA) adopted regulations on 20 October 2009.[22] The Applicant Review Panel was randomly selected on 16 November 2009. The initial application period to apply to be on the commission began on 15 December 2009 and continued through 16 February 2010.[23] The BSA issued more regulations in 2010 dealing with how the first 8 commissioners would select the remaining 6.[24] The required supplemental application period began on 17 February 2010 and continued through 19 April 2010.[23] California Proposition 20 was passed in November 2010.[23]

The California State Auditor collected nearly 5,000 completed applications out of over 30,000[25] for the commission. A three-member panel of auditors reviewed the applications and conducted interviews to establish a pool of 20 Democrats, 20 Republicans, and 20 applicants from neither major party. The panel submitted the list of 60 of the most qualified applicants to the Legislature on September 29, 2010.[23]

The speaker of the California State Assembly, the president pro tempore of the California State Senate, and the minority party leaders in the Assembly and the Senate, as authorized by the law, jointly reduced the pools to 12 members in each pool. The Legislature submitted a list of applicants remaining in the pool on 12 November 2010.[23]The State Auditor then randomly drew three Democrats, three Republicans, and two applicants from neither major party to become commissioners on 18 November 2010.[23] Finally, these first eight commissioners selected six commissioners from the remaining applicants in the pools on 15 December 2010.[23][26]

Here are some before/after images for districts

This is my home district before Prop 11:


And here is after:


This is what that original district (CA-11th) looks like now:


The big takeaway for how our district has changed is to look carefully at the old 11th. Notice how the district skirts ever so carefully around the historically liberal San Jose (the red lines on the map), and around the historically liberal East Bay urban strip (Fremont-Oakland-Berkeley-Richmond), grabbing instead the white, affluent, historically conservative exurbs (Pleasanton, Concord, etc.) and the Central Valley farming communities of Manteca and Lodi. To reiterate - Morgan Hill, an ~suburb of San Jose is not in the same district as San Jose, but was instead lumped in with Danville, a town 60 miles to our North, Manteca, a town 86 miles to our northeast, and Lodi, a town 107 miles to our Northeast.

Here's another example:

CA-38th before:


And after:


I have problems with the commission being designed as explicitly bipartisan, in that it by design crowds out 3rd party options, and I'd much rather an independent commission with a proportional representation model like STV, the CRC has been undeniably successful at reducing gerrymandering and ensuring geographically coherent district maps.

http://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/r-0317emr.pdf

 

[Valka D'Ur]

We got pot, gerrymandering and voter registration laws! A lot of interesting stuff! And I am undecided on two of them.

I really have no idea how to go on this one. I've listened to radio interviews of people for and against. Supposedly drug arrests in colorado have remained about the same, so legalizing pot hasn't really helped out minority convictions as much as people hoped. I've also heard that total impaired driving has gone up. But on the other hand it seems good for revenues and alcoholism is down.

Cannabis just became legal in Canada, and it's a mess. Retail stores ran out of stock thisfast and they can't get more until specific dates, because there are regulations regarding how often they're allowed to restock. Impaired driving laws are being rewritten, and municipal bylaws are being rewritten over where cannabis consumption is permitted (most public places don't allow smoking anymore and outside it can't be within a specific number of metres from store and office entrances).

There may be court challenges over residential growing regulations, as the government idiotically said that up to 4 plants may be cultivated per residence. But they didn't take into account the problems inherent in apartment buildings. So the company that owns the place where I live (they have apartment buildings all over Canada) made the decision to ban smoking of cannabis in the public areas of the building (smoking is permitted in suites and on balconies), and absolutely forbids anyone from growing even a single plant in the suite.

There's a backlog of people applying for pardons for marijuana-related offenses, and of course just because it's legal in Canada doesn't mean that anyone who smokes/consumes it will be allowed over the border into the U.S. So people are still either going to be turned away if they're honest or if they have a conviction on record.

So far I would say that the only person who actually did benefit from this legalization was a Girl Scout who used the opportunity of people lined up to buy marijuana; she had cookies to sell, so her father escorted her there and she sold out of her entire inventory.

This proposal is very difficult because it's written into the constitution, so hard to repeal if it sucks, and random registered voters? They might not be remotely qualified to do the redistricting and when selected by the secretary of state I don't know how much faith I have in them being totally random. But I do like the idea of just drawing big squares on a map to make districts instead of the mess we have now to keeps parties in power. And all the big business republicans hate this proposal which makes it all the more attractive to me. However there aren't details on the appropriation of funds for the commission. Like how much money do they get to do this?

Would the people chosen have the option to refuse to participate? (and no, I wouldn't count on the "random" draw being totally honest)

This seems like a no brainer yes to me. Why aren't you automatically registered to vote anyway? Voting shouldn't be burdensome.

This seems crazy to me. Every year when we do federal income tax forms, there's a box to tick off if you want to be added to the federal voting list. I always check mine off, as it's not only a way to keep everything up to date regarding my address, but it means I don't need to worry if an election happens unexpectedly (the next election is scheduled for a little less than a year from now but it could come sooner). The way things work here is that if a budget bill isn't passed, a new election is triggered. There are other ways in which a non-confidence vote can trigger a new election, but budgets are the usual ways used.

For provincial elections, things aren't as easy. Voters had two ways to register for next year's election - either online or by phone. I registered by phone (because I moved since the last election, it's essential to get my address straightened out), so when the enumerators came around to register anyone who hadn't already done so, I didn't need to worry about them contacting me. And this reminds me that I need to make sure I'm no longer registered at my previous address.

What bothers me is that there are probably people like me with mobility issues who can't physically get to the polling station and therefore they think they can't vote - so they don't register. I've been shouting it from the metaphorical rooftops on CBC.ca every chance I get that such people can apply for in-home special ballots, and if any other commenter knows people in that situation, please tell them about this. It's not something Elections Canada ever bothers to mention anymore (definitely not since the Reformacons got in back in 2006) and it's buried far down on the EC website so people just don't know. Even the candidate I voted for in 2015 hadn't known about it.

 

[schlaufuchs]

Also:

California's redistricting commission model was itself based on Arizona's proposition-106, passed in 2000, which implemented a similar system. Here's what their district maps looked like before-and-after-2000

1993-2002:


2003-2013:


2013-present:


Another indication of the proposition's success, and why "independent" (independent of other governmental apparati) are important: in 2011 the AIRC (the Arizona commission) proposed a redistricting map which slightly shifted the political balance in Arizona towards Democrat representation. In November of that year, the Republican governor Jan Brewer proposed, and the Republican-controlled Senate approved to have AIRC chairwoman Colleen Mathis expelled from the council. The Brewer also attempted to have the two democratic-leaning members of the commission removed, though the Senate refused to vote on that. The State Supreme Court founded Brewers cited reasoning of "gross misconduct" to be unfounded, and Mathis was reinstated as chairwoman of AIRC 10 days later. Their redrawing continued and was eventually approved.

 

[MaryKB]

I'm voting Yes on all three next week, I feel these will be very good for Michigan. I don't smoke marijuana and I have no intention to, but I really don't like how it's treated as such a horrible crime thing when everything I understand leads me to believe it's mostly harmless, certainly not worse than drinking alcohol, you know? I feel how you see marijuana demonized just seems so incredibly silly to me. I feel really sickened by gerrymandering, and so I'm very much in favor of them doing something to fix that, I don't like how people in power decide on voting control, and I'm sure it's more complex than it looks there and you're going to see some sort of organization behind it. And that voting registration thing isn't just for being registered automatically, but also from what I read does away with how you have to wait two weeks or whatever, and allows you to register on voting day even, and also you can get absentee ballots much easier too.

I know my Republican congressperson is against all three and my Democrat candidate is in favor, so I guess this really says a lot, right?

 

[Cheetah]

The randomly selected thing is what would make me ultimately vote no on number 2. Random selection rarely produces good results. Jury duty and conscription being two examples I would point at to demonstrate the idiocy of random selection.

Even if random selection would produce a less than optimal solution, the current situation is unequivocally bad, so a suboptimal solution would be much preferable. And it's fully possible to get a good solution as well.

But others have expanded on it much better.

Vote yes to all three.

 

[schlaufuchs]

The randomly selected thing is what would make me ultimately vote no on number 2. Random selection rarely produces good results. Jury duty and conscription being two examples I would point at to demonstrate the idiocy of random selection.

This isn't how the selection process would work:

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

Easy yes on all three. Michigan has had some of the worst roads and schools for going on 40 years now, and even a little bit of extra revenue from marijuana could help out big time.

Two is a yes, and state constitutions get amended all the time, so I wouldn't worry.

Three shouldn't even be up for debate imo, it's rock solid and badly needed.

The first two aren't 100% perfect but pretty darn good and way better than what we currently have. Michigan has some of the worst gerrymandering and voter purging in the nation and we can deal a pretty fatal blow to it finally.

Unrelated; where does everyone in Michigan live here? Civver you're on the east side right? Where else are some of you peeps at (well, I know most of you in this thread aren't from MI but still)

 

[Cheetah]

What is that thing in the north-east that wasn't gone until 2013??

 

[MaryKB]

Unrelated; where does everyone in Michigan live here? Civver you're on the east side right? Where else are some of you peeps at (well, I know most of you in this thread aren't from MI but still)

I'm pretty much right in the middle

 

[schlaufuchs]

Most of NE Arizona is Navajo reservation. The square is a Hopi enclave within the Navajo reservation.



Fun fact - Arizona doesn’t observe DST, Navajo Nation does, and Hopi doesn’t, meaning you could drive through Arizona and have to change your clocks 5 times.

 

[uppi]

This proposal is very difficult because it's written into the constitution, so hard to repeal if it sucks, and random registered voters? They might not be remotely qualified to do the redistricting and when selected by the secretary of state I don't know how much faith I have in them being totally random. But I do like the idea of just drawing big squares on a map to make districts instead of the mess we have now to keeps parties in power. And all the big business republicans hate this proposal which makes it all the more attractive to me. However there aren't details on the appropriation of funds for the commission. Like how much money do they get to do this?

I assume that it is currently the state legislature that draws the district? In that case you should definitely go for it. The very last people who you want to draw districts are the incumbents of these districts. Even if the proposal might no be perfect, it is better to vote for the good proposal now rather than reject it now in favor of the perfect proposal that will probably never come.

If you need FPTP districts, then this is one of the better ways to do it. Short of legislating an algorithm into law, random selection seems to be one of the best options.

This seems like a no brainer yes to me. Why aren't you automatically registered to vote anyway? Voting shouldn't be burdensome.

I completely agree.

I have problems with the commission being designed as explicitly bipartisan, in that it by design crowds out 3rd party options, and I'd much rather an independent commission with a proportional representation model like STV, the CRC has been undeniably successful at reducing gerrymandering and ensuring geographically coherent district maps.

If you don't explicitly design it as bipartisan, there is a decent chance that one of the parties gets an outright majority in the commission. With a 40/40/20 R/D/I split and 13 commission members, there is a 20% chance that either party achieves that, so only a 60% chance to get a non-partisan commission. Yes it crowds out 3rd party options, but those are crowded out by the voting system, anyway. If you want to have a multi-party system you need to change the voting system, not the districting method.

 

[Cheetah]

@Owen Glyndwr:
Confusing. Why was the Hopi enclave connected by a thin string to the district in the west? Does it vote that differently?

 

[civvver]

I live in great suburb of Lyon township, it's west of Novi and south of Milford, two very nice suburbs in their own right. I guess it's a suburb of detroit, though it's 40 miles out and on the very edge of oakland county. I'm about 20 miles north of ann arbor though no one thinks of us as a suburb of ann arbor. People think of ann arbor itself as a suburb more than an urban area, which I guess I agree, there are only a few big buildings downtown, it's not very city like.

My wife is from the west side, grand rapids. Very nice area out there.

 

[civvver]

I'm pretty much right in the middle

So lansing? Go green?

Hey how are you guys voting on the governor? I loathe schutte but don't know that much about whitmer and granholm didn't seem to do so well in getting the state back on track and whitmer seems like from a similar mold. Maybe I'm just too surface level cus they're both democrat women who were lawyers. They may have significant policy differences I don't know about.

I've read some highlights on their differences in issues between schutte and whitmer, like personal income tax, medicaid, education, road funding, and the proposals and fall solidly on whitmer's side, but there's nothing about their business policies and that's where granholm really messed up and I think snyder has done fairly well.