The real mandates U.S. voters approved
Ballot wins include recreational drugs, taxes and jobs
Just what were the American people telling us on Election Day? The 120 ballot measures voted on by Americans in 32 states send a strong message: Americans want to be left alone and they are willing to leave others alone to run their own lives.
Take the drug legalization initiatives that passed across the country. This is an area of policy legislators tend to view as too hot to handle until voters make their preferences impossible to ignore or oppose.
Continuing a trend, four states voted to legalize recreational cannabis: South Dakota, Montana, Arizona and New Jersey. Mississippi approved medical marijuana. Washington, D.C., effectively decriminalized psychedelic mushrooms and Oregon effectively decriminalized possession of all drugs — yes, including heroin and cocaine. This means 19 states have used the initiative or referendum process to enact medical marijuana laws and 13 states have legalized recreational use of the drug via ballot measures. Only Vermont and Illinois have legalized recreational use of marijuana and cannabis through the legislative process.
If the drug initiatives suggested that Americans want the government to stay out of their recreational activities, voters in Michigan spoke for the nation, saying they want officials to stay out of their lives online, too. Nearly 89 percent of Michigan residents voted to amend the state constitution to require authorities to get a search warrant to access a person’s electronic data and communications.
And voters in a range of states expressed skepticism about paying more in taxes, even as state and local governments face serious cash crunches induced by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
In California, voters narrowly defeated the legislature’s efforts to weaken Proposition 13, an amendment to the state’s constitution passed by ballot initiative in 1978, that limited how rapidly property taxes could rise, tying those increases to inflation and limiting them to a maximum of 2 percent a year.
Voters, even in blue states, continued to express support for flat or single rate taxes. Illinois voted by a 9 percentage-point margin against moving from its present constitutionally mandated “flat tax” of 4.95 percent to a “graduated” or “progressive” tax system that would have allowed the legislature to divide Illinois citizens into income brackets and tax them at different rates. In Colorado, progressives planned an initiative to replace the state’s flat tax with different rates for different brackets. They were not able to get enough signatures to put that measure before voters. Instead, a counterinitiative to reduce the Colorado flat income tax from 4.63 to 4.55 percent passed by a margin of 57.7 to 42.7 percent.
These results were a further reminder that it’s hard to move away from a flat-tax system. Even Massachusetts has five times voted down moving to a graduated income tax. Taxpayers value being treated equally. They also know that a politician promising to tax the rich has not finished the sentence. They will tax the rich first, and then everyone else. They may also believe in their own upward mobility and fear progressive taxation schemes will eventually put them in the crosshairs.
Colorado voters went further and strengthened their TABOR, Taxpayer Bill of Rights, which requires a vote of the people for any tax hike. Now many fee hikes will also require a vote of the people, a crucial distinction to make because some enterprising politicians had made a habit of renaming their favorite taxes as “fees.”
Two significant tax hikes demonstrate just how slippery the language around taxation can be. Arkansas Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson led a successful campaign to make a temporary sales-tax hike from 6 percent to 6.5 permanent. How? The governor argued it wasn’t really a tax hike. Arizona amended the state constitution to increase its already progressive income-tax top rate from 4.5 to 8 percent by a vote of 51.8 to 48.2 percent. How? Advocates claimed it would only hit the rich, when it largely hits small businesses.
Two other California votes are worth watching, if only as a preview of debates to come — and as proof that loyalty to a party on a national level can disguise more nuanced political perspectives. Though deep-blue California voted overwhelmingly for President-elect Joe Biden, those same voters pulled the lever to maintain the state’s ban on the use of racial preferences in California state and local government contracting, employment and education.
And in a hard-fought, expensive battle, Californians voted to allow ride-hailing drivers to continue working as independent contractors. This statewide rebuke of these limits on independent contractors may serve as a powerful signal to Congress that independent contractors have political support.
Voters didn’t back radical change this year, either in the candidates they selected, or the ballot initiatives they considered. But politicians looking for guidance might do well to listen to voters who want to control the substances they use, the money they earn and the ways they earn it. That’s the real mandate Americans voted for.