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Media Coverage - Matt Smith: Why Not More Proposals at the Polls?
Published November 12, 2006. By Matt Smith. Livingston Daily Press & Argus
OK, voters. Time for a quiz on last week’s election.
Of the following, which got the most votes in Tuesday’s polling?A. U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s re-election bid.
B. Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s re-election bid.
C. The “no” side of the mourning dove hunting referendum.
D. Attorney General Mike Cox’s re-election bid.
Time’s up. No write-ins. No recounts. No hanging chads. Ready?
The answer is C, the referendum on controversial legislation that did at the ballot box what birds of all kinds do to my car. It collected a whopping 2.52 million votes, compared to Stabenow’s 2.15 million, Granholm’s 2.14 million and Cox’s 1.99 million amid record turnout for a midterm election — 3.8 million voters, or 53 percent of all registered voters.
If that comes as a surprise, you’re not alone. I was taken a bit aback when I saw the numbers. What’s more, people were about as likely to go all the way down the ballot to find and vote on the hunting measure (3.65 million) as they were to vote on state’s top law enforcement official (3.69 million), the attorney general — a race that’s practically the top of the ticket.
When you get down to it, though, the results ought not to be a shock for a couple of reasons:
1. Mourning doves are cute, or so some say, and deserve to be protected, while not-so-cute animals such as cows and pigs and deserve to be dinner and/or shoes.
2. People hunger to push around the government for a change, instead of the opposite way around — you know, the typical chain of events that leaves most people feeling like they don’t have a say on anything.
In the case of dove hunting, the Legislature came up with a measure that would allow the creation of a season for mourning dove hunting despite a 100-year ban on the practice in Michigan. That prompted some bird lovers to mount a campaign in opposition to the law, they and wound up putting it to a vote of the people in Tuesday’s election.
As it turned out, voters agreed with the bird lovers and shot down against the legislation by a rate of more than 2-to-1, which is a resounding defeat by any measure. Even Republican gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos didn’t lose that badly. Even the Michigan State football team doesn’t get humbled that badly, at least not regularly.
The upshot: The Legislature had an idea that voters considered crummy, and it wasn’t enacted because enough people stood up and said so.
In the interest of full disclosure, I voted “yes” on the measure, not because I am an avid hunter, but because I hoped the hunting community could finally take care of the birds that make a mess on my car year after year. No such luck. But I’ll live with the decision.
Why? Because that’s how the system ought to work. No power brokers. No back-room wheeling and dealing. Just a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down.
The whole mess with Proposal 2 is taking a little luster off that gem of democratic achievement, though. As you might have seen in a Page One story today, the University of Michigan and other groups are vowing to fight the voters’ decision to prevent affirmative action from being a factor at universities and in public hiring and contracting.
The cynic in me — and, admittedly, the MSU grad — sees that development at U-M and laughs. I guess some folks figure the will of the people matters only when it jibes with their politics, but it can always be challenged and dragged through court when it doesn’t.
All the same, it would have been fun to see a few more long-standing issues settled at the ballot box on Election Day.
Like what? For starters, I think we need a constitutional amendment to make people lower the volume on their Nextel walkie-talkies to something short of the decibel level of a Guns N’Roses concert while in public. I thought it was called a walkie-talkie, not a walkie-screamie-meemie, but I could be wrong.
I would have loved a referendum on roundabouts. Judging from the comments at Story Chat on livingstondaily.com and in letters to the editor of the newspaper, it seems half the people who use roundabouts are seething with road rage and the other half are trying to avoid them at all costs. Why not put roundabouts to a vote?
I’d also love to see a ballot proposal to make it a criminal offense to set up Christmas items in retail establishments before Halloween and Thanksgiving are out of the way while we’re at it. If this trend keeps going, in a couple of generations, kids are going to be writing up their wish lists before Labor Day. That’s just not right.
I mean, what fun is there in asking Santa for a hunting rifle in the fall when voters are going to outlaw mourning dove hunting long before Christmas?
