Virtues of a Super Majority

Unable to fix the real problems facing California, our state's elected officials look for scapegoats to blame for our late and unbalanced budgets, and underperforming state programs and services. Recently, the target of their wrath has increasingly been the two-thirds super majority of votes needed to pass a budget.

Here is a well written article of how the two-thirds threshold came to be [note, I don't always/often agree with the views of this particular website, but their research here is excellent]. Briefly, in 1933 a constitutional amendment was passed, stating that the budget could not grow more than 5% in a year unless approved by 2/3 of the legislature. In 1962, as part of Prop 16 - which condensed the state constitution - the 5% rule was removed, leaving us with the current requirement of a two-thirds super majority vote necessary to pass a budget.

In 2004, Prop 56 asked to lower the majority needed to pass a budget or raise taxes (also 2/3) down to 55%. Overwhelmingly, voters were against it, with nearly 66% voting to maintain the super majority.

So, is the super majority a good thing? If so, why?

California is, in many ways, a microcosm of the United States. Much like the nation in general, our state is massive in area, yet has relatively small pockets of high population density. For example, Los Angeles County alone accounts for nearly 10 million out of the estimated 36,756,666 population of California. Combine that with the over 3 million people each living in both San Diego and Orange Counties, and the over 2 million people each living in both Riverside and San Bernadino counties, and that totals over 20 million people, more than half of the total state population. [Figures from U.S. Census Bureau 2008 estimates].

The federal government deals with a similar issue by having two methods of legislative representation. The House of Representatives accords legislators based on state population. The Senate accepts two Senators from every state, regardless of size. California's State Assembly and State Senate both draw districts based on population size, and have since 1968 (before then, each county could only have one State Senator).

Now, we happen to live at a moment when the party line split in the two state legislative houses is just short of two-thirds for Democrats and just above one-third for Republicans. This has led many to consider the super majority threshold to be a partisan issue. But, let's forget political parties for a moment and remember that the legislators represent (or, at least are supposed to represent) the people of their districts throughout our state.

As outlined above, Southern California has the population, and with it the legislators, to dictate the budget process for the entire state, if a simple majority ruled. Northern California and, especially, central California would be left out to dry. Indeed, in the past this has sparked in-state fighting over issues such as water sharing, transportation funding, etc.

California's Central Valley, for example, has a population of about 6.5 million covering 42,000 square miles (as opposed to almost 10 million people living on L.A. County's 4,752 square miles). Yet "four of the top five counties in agricultural sales in the U.S. are in the Central Valley." Should this type of extraordinary production not have a meaningful voice in state budget discussions?

Therefore, the two thirds super majority vote is necessary specifically for a state such as ours. It ensures meaningful representation for all Californians. When todays' budget compromise was passed, it raised taxes on everyone throughout our state. And, we have quite a history in this nation of opposing taxation without representation.

Beyond that, with the state budget growing to over 100 BILLION dollars, isn't it reasonable to expect that our paid, elected officials can come up with a plan that at least 66% of them will support?