Voters will decide to ban
recognition of same-sex marriages in the
March 2000 primary
election. Photo by Lina Katz
Once again in March, Californians will receive a thick ballot pamphlet explaining the issues they will be called on to vote. Two pages into it, the head will spin and even the conscientious will find it difficult to read until the end. No matter, most will have already been bombarded with 30-second commercials telling them how to vote on propositions ranging from marriage to money.
This, nowadays, is how citizens decide on some of society's most difficult and cultural issues. We vote. It may be confusing, unfair and dominated by money, but the initiative system is here to stay.
There is no more appropriate place to try to decipher the history, promise and opposition to an initiative than a Graduate School of Journalism. To that end, 11 students took on Proposition 22 as their final class project. This web page is the fruit of their efforts.