Ballot Proposal Fatigue: How Many is Too Many?
Consider this:
After Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling put three more hotly contested proposals on the ballot, there are nowsix proposals awaiting voter response: On Election Day voters will be asked yay or nay to: Another bridge to Canada, the emergency manager Law (PA4), stronger collective bargaining power, higher energy efficiency standards for businesses, a required supermajority vote in the House before any taxes are raised, and organizing rights for home health care workers.
Phew!
Sounds like voting this year could bring on a full-fledged case of decision fatigue. What exactly does that mean?
John Tierney of The New York Times reports:
“It’s different from ordinary physical fatigue — you’re not consciously aware of being tired — but you’re low on mental energy. The more choices you have to make throughout the day, the harder each one becomes for your brain, and eventually it looks for shortcuts, usually in either of two very different ways.”
It’s these shortcuts that could become dangerous this Election Day. The shortcuts can take two forms, The Times reports: One is making hasty, reckless decisions (“Sure, I’ll vote for that. I just want to be done”), the other is making no decision at all (“I’ll leave that one blank. My brain hurts”).
The term decision fatigue a new finding involving a phenomenon called ego depletion, a term coined by social psychologist Roy Baumeister based on a Freudian idea. On Election Day voters will have to say yay or nay to: Another bridge to Canada, the emergency manager Law (PA4), Stricter Collective Bargaining agreements, higheger energy efficiency standards for businesses, a required supermajority vote in the House before any taxes are raised, home health care workers having right to organize and create registry listings.
Phew!
To ease decision fatigue at the polls, stay tuned in for more Morning Coffee. We’ll go over the language of each proposal (once it’s been selected) so you can make your own—unrushed—decision before the big day.
Neutral Ground Scarce Amid Michigan Ballot Wars
Other than voting for the next U.S. President in November, Michigan voters will have a tremendous decision to make: Yay or nay to the State’s emergency manager law, Public Act 4?
Perhaps the biggest opponents to PA4 are unions. Under the emergency manager or financial board rule, they know what’s coming, and it’s not good.
That’s why as we edge closer to Election Day we voters can expect to be bombarded with advertisements, fliers and e-mails sponsored by unions bent on destroying the legislation that’s set to destroy them.
But there’s another side to the story. The other soldiers on the battlefield are supporters of the emergency manager legislation: Officials on a state and municipal level, business people who want to skip collective bargaining, and a host of citizens who believe the State’s struggling cities and school districts would be better off without collective bargaining contracts sucking up already sparse funds.
A coalition of businesses is gearing up to raise funds in support of the controversial legislation, while unions are shoring up support against it. In other words, a battle is brewing. And amid the spiky campaigns on both fronts, it may be tough for voters to come to fair, unbiased information on this highly polarized issue.
Meanwhile, there’s another ballot initiative unions and the state are battling over as you read this. Unions want to ensure their place in government and so the Protect Our Jobs project was created.
The Protect Our Jobs group have collected more than enough signatures to get a measure on the ballot that would mandate collective bargaining:
"Attorney General Bill Schuette and Gov. Rick Snyder are joining the battle to keep the union-backed Protect Our Jobs proposal off the November ballot, saying the measure as written doesn’t give voters “the basic tools” to know exactly what they are voting for.
...State and national unions have donated more than $8 million to support Protect Our Jobs, which would enshrine collective bargaining in the state constitution."
That’s a lot of cash. But if this passes, it’ll make things a whole lot tougher for union busters, even if PA4 gets the O.K. from the electorate.
Still, it raises the question: Are unions archaic? Is there a way to redesign labor agreements and keep fair work environments and wages?
And for those of us hitting the voting booths in November, how can we access unbiased factual information to make an informed decision about PA4 or the Protect Our Jobs proposal if we have been flooded with propaganda from both sides?
Minni's Morning Coffee: PA4 Repealed, Now What?
The Michigan Supreme Court on Friday ruled that PA4, the state’s controversial emergency manager law, be put on the November ballot for Michigan voters to decide it's fate in the November election.
But now that the law has been put to a vote of the people, it is technically not a law (quite yet) anymore until the people decide. So the emergency manager law may be suspended until November, although lawsuits are set to fly on whether it should be.
Gov. Rick Snyder has said that everything done thus far under PA4 will not suddenly be erased, but no new developments cannot be made until the November vote. Current emergency managers will have to take a demotion for a few months and go back o the the powers they had under the former emergency manager law, passed in 1990.
The 1990 law does not give emergency managers as much power. One key difference is that it forbids an E.M. to shape collective bargaining agreements.
The Detroit Free Press report quoted one lawyer, John Philo, legal director of the Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice in Detroit saying:
“…Going forward, anything under the consent agreement that is ostensibly under Public Act 4 can’t be taken – anything that’s clearly a Public Act 4 power is suspended. It raises serious questions about any continuing powers for the Financial Advisory Board and some of the powers granted to the program management director.”
There are other lawyers like Donato Lorio, a lawyer for the Detroit Police Officers Association, who believe city’s recent pay and benefits cuts imposed on city labor unions are now “null and void.”
Whatever the case, Detroit is in for another round of turbulent debates and Michiganders will face a big decision come November. No more bickering from the sidelines, people get a chance to once and for all put this controversial law to rest.
But it does raise the question: If there's no strong emergency manager law, then what's in store for DPS and other cities facing financial crisis?
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