California's citizens are again being  asked to navigate the bizarre landscape of political discourse in order  to make decisions that we pay our legislators to make for us.   This time, the political paralysis that is called party loyalty may  well force Republicans voters to oppose the spending controls that Democrats  agreed to with great reluctance.

The issue is that while a "yes" vote  for Measure 1A codifies the temporary tax increase, it also creates  spending limits and a "rainy day fund" intended to mitigate economic-downturn  related deficits.  Voting against 1A leaves the tax increase in place,  but de-links it from spending controls.  Unfortunately, the knee-jerk  political reaction to any threat of taxation is to say "no," even  if it makes fiduciary sense.

The "no tax, no way" position also  flies in the face of responsible budget management marked by attempts  to close the severe budget gap.

This type of confusion is handy for  politicians, who prefer the simplicity of black and white talking points  - in this case, pro-tax vs. anti-tax - over complex, multi-faceted  levels of information.  Anyone in favor of 1A is pro-tax (i.e.,  the Democratic position); anyone opposed is anti-tax (i.e., the Republican  position).  No one seems interested in whether the measures will  solve the state's fiscal crisis.

It is near impossible to achieve  serious understanding of this matter through the voter guides as written.   Vague phrases such as "could limit future deficits and spending"  don't add much light to the heat.  The "What Your Vote Means"  section says that with a NO vote, "higher state taxes recently passed  would end by 2010-11," but fails to mention anything about the lack  of spending restrictions that would result.

The guides are incomprehensible -  filled with political and legal jargon that is obfuscatory at best and  wrong at worst.  Plus, as the economic reality for print journalism  has shown recently, nobody reads anyway.  So we're likely to  have a tiny percentage of California's voters making real decisions  about 1A-1F, while most others will follow their party's or their  union's or somebody's line.

There are some honest attempts to communicate  clearly about these issues (for example, KQED's Forum has run an in-depth  series on the ballot measures), but these approaches are probably reaching  the same people who read the voter's guides with care and come to  their own conclusions.   It's facile to argue that any attack  on ballot initiatives is a condemnation of voter's rights, since we  know many voting decisions are made without a great deal of study.   But these complicated ballot measures hare hardly the same as choosing  between two or more candidates.

As has been noted here before, we elect  our representatives to put the time and effort into understanding complex  matters and voting sensibly on them.  Evading this responsibility  by throwing so many crucial issues back to the voters is a condemnation  of the politicians, not the voting public.  We clearly need to  elect people who are capable of, and willing to make the crucial decisions,  and reduce the ballot initiatives to a handful of concerns that should  truly belong to the voters.