California Is the Dumbest State

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/my-california-ballot-2022

Previously: 2018, 2020

This is California, so the Democrats always win. When I vote, I mean to send a signal somewhere in between “you are the candidate I really prefer for this office” and “I will vote for the Democrat if I approve of her and want her to have a mandate; otherwise I will vote for the Republican as a protest”.

I try to have a weak bias towards voting “NO” on state constitutional amendments, because unless there’s a compelling reason otherwise I would rather legislators be able to react to events than have things hard-coded for all time.

I lean liberal-to-libertarian; the further you are from that, the less useful you’ll find my opinions.

Proposition 1: Constitutional Amendment Enshrining Right To Abortion

California will never decide to ban abortion. If the federal government decides to ban abortion, California’s state constitution won’t matter. So you would think that having a right to abortion in the Constitution is a purely symbolic matter.

The people arguing for the proposition don’t address this concern.

The people arguing against the proposition claim that this is a Trojan Horse intended to sneak in support for using taxpayer funding for late-term and partial-birth abortions, which California doesn’t currently do. Is this true?

It’s true that California currently doesn’t allow abortions past 24 weeks. It’s true that the exact text of the proposed amendment is:

The state shall not deny or interfere with an individual’s reproductive freedom in their most intimate decisions, which includes their fundamental right to choose to have an abortion and their fundamental right to choose or refuse contraceptives. This section is intended to further the constitutional right to privacy guaranteed by Section 1, and the constitutional right to not be denied equal protection guaranteed by Section 7. Nothing herein narrows or limits the right to privacy or equal protection

…which sure doesn’t sound like it’s saying the state can continue to ban abortion after 24 weeks. But this article quotes law professors who reassure us that courts would totally understand that this amendment has to be interpreted in the context in which it was written - ie a state which supports a 24-week abortion ban - so no court would ever interpret it as making 24-week abortion bans unconstitutional. So apparently our defense against this is . . . that all California judges will be die-hard originalists completely immune to the temptation of judicial activism even when the text is begging them to do it.

A friend brings up that late-term partial-birth abortions happen more often in Republicans’ imaginations than in real life. When they do happen in real life, it’s usually for sympathetic medical reasons.

I interpret this as a purely symbolic measure that has no real benefits, probably also has no real risks, but writes a poorly-worded thing whose explicit text nobody wants into the state constitution. I vote NO.

Proposition 26: Legalize In Person Sports Gambling At Racetracks And Indian Casinos

Allows four racetracks in the state to offer in person sports betting, and tribal casinos to allow “sports betting, roulette, and games played with dice”.

California is truly the dumbest state. I believe this for many reasons, but my reason for believing it today is that apparently the law allows tribal casinos to offer slot machines, but not roulette or dice games. Nobody comes out and says exactly why, but I think it’s because of this paragraph in the California constitution, from 1872

Every person who deals, plays, or carries on, opens, or causes to be opened, or who conducts, either as owner or employee, whether for hire or not, any game of faro, monte, roulette, lansquenet, rouge et noire, rondo, tan, fan-tan, seven-and-a-half, twenty-one, hokey-pokey, or any banking or percentage game played with cards, dice, or any device, for money, checks, credit, or other representative of value, and every person who plays or bets at or against any of those prohibited games, is guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall be punishable by a fine not less than one hundred dollars ($100) nor more than one thousand dollars ($1,000), or by imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding six months, or by both the fine and imprisonment.

Since roulette existed in 1872 but slot machines didn’t, the Constitution banned roulette but not slot machines, and that rule has continued to the present day. Now if slot-machine-filled casinos want to also have roulette, they need a Constitutional amendment. DID I MENTION THAT I WISH PEOPLE WOULD STOP ADDING EVERY LAW THAT THEY LIKE TO THE CONSTITUTION?

But this law also allows random people to sue “card clubs”, ie small-scale private gambling establishments. We originally thought this was a Texas-style “bounty” law that gave the random people part of the winnings, but it seems this isn’t true. I’m not sure if the idea is that legal gambling establishments would fund these lawsuits, or if they just expect private citizens to do this out of the love of suing people.

Although I think the first prong of the law - allowing roulette and sports betting at casinos - makes sense, the second prong seems to be casinos making it easier to shut down their competitors. These competitors are probably ordinary people who want to gamble in a backroom somewhere without hurting anyone else. And the argument against on the ballot is by the Black Chamber of Commerce, saying that these card clubs are a useful source of revenue for poor minority communities. I don’t want to help giant casinos put a bounty on their heads. I vote NO.