Ballot initiatives: who gets to argue against it?

[Rajiv Prabhakar]

Was thinking about how EBJ ties into ballot initiatives in a large state like California. The whole premise behind EBJ is that candidates get to present their case to the jury. This works well for elections, where each candidate is in charge of presenting their case. How would this work in a ballot initiative?

Whoever got the ballot initiative "on the ballot" should clearly be in charge of presenting their case to the jury. They make the final call on who gets to do the talking, cross-examination, and the entire court-strategy. But who gets to present in opposition to the ballot initiative? There is no single person or organization who can claim to represent the opposition. And within the opposition, there will be different people who want to present very different arguments, and adopt very different strategies. How do we decide who among them gets to represent the opposition?

It is tempting to have the government appoint someone to lead and coordinate the opposition. Similar to district-attorneys being assigned to lead the prosecution in court cases. But this can go badly for public policy ballot initiatives. It makes it too easy for the government to appoint a patsy, to present an extremely bad case, because the government official actually wants the initiative to pass.

You also can't give an open forum for anyone who wants to make an argument against the initiative. For controversial initiatives, there will be thousands of people who feel passionately. All of whom would want to present their own arguments, call on their own unique witnesses, and conduct their own cross-examinations. The case will drag on forever, and it won't be an even playing field.

I think the only viable option is to have different people nominate themselves to lead the opposition, and we use a preliminary EBJ in order to choose one person from among all nominees? Not the most elegant solution. Let me know if you guys can think of other ideas.

Regards,
Rajiv

[Clay S]

On Saturday, May 3, 2025 at 12:23:35 PM UTC-7 rajivprab wrote:

Was thinking about how EBJ ties into ballot initiatives in a large state like California. The whole premise behind EBJ is that candidates get to present their case to the jury. This works well for elections, where each candidate is in charge of presenting their case. How would this work in a ballot initiative?

yeah i've had the same thought. you might look into how oregon healthy democracy did it with the citizen initiative review.

https://healthydemocracy.org/home/services/cir/

Whoever got the ballot initiative "on the ballot" should clearly be in charge of presenting their case to the jury.

yep.

But who gets to present in opposition to the ballot initiative? There is no single person or organization who can claim to represent the opposition. And within the opposition, there will be different people who want to present very different arguments, and adopt very different strategies. How do we decide who among them gets to represent the opposition?

it hard question is!!

[Rajiv Prabhakar]

That's interesting:

> CIR Delegates hear testimonies on ballot measures from campaign advocates and independent experts. A Q&A is conducted for Panelists to ask questions and probe for more information and understanding about the nuances of the ballot measures.

> Although bias is a natural human condition, we strive for a process that minimizes unproductive political bias. The process follows an evidence-driven structure that fosters problem-solving that goes beyond partisanship. Our professional moderator teams are specifically trained to balance participation, manage power imbalances, and put Delegate autonomy first, assisting them to make their own informed decisions.

Hard to get specific answers from their website, but it sounds like they do some combination of:

1. Professional moderators to guide the process

2. Self-nomination by activists and experts

3. Letting the "jurors" decide who they want to hear more from

I can see this working well in local or low-stakes initiatives. I still think we need something more tamper-proof and scalable for things like California's ballot initiatives.

Regards,
Rajiv

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[Clay S]

i haaate the idea of moderators.