2008 Michigan Ballot Proposals Examined

Holland, Michigan -- With a presidential election going on Michiganders seem to have little else to say about the rest of the elections taking place in the state. Senator Carl Levin is once again expected to cruise to reelection and so are most of our state's House members. Because Michigan finds itself to be a battleground state in the presidential race yet again most of our state's media outlets are focusing their political coverage on the battle between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain. Flying under the radar screen are two ballot proposals, neither of them drawing as much contention on the surface as 2006's affirmative action ban or 2004's ban on gay marriage, but important nonetheless, perhaps more important than we would expect.

The first ballot proposal deals with embryonic stem cell research and would allow couples undergoing in vitro fertilization to donate their excess embryos to scientists so that they can be utilized to find cures for disease. Though Republicans once drummed up opposition to such proposals on the grounds that fertilized cells have potential personhood, wide public support for stem cell research has led them to abandon it as yet another potential wedge issue to woo religious voters so I don't expect it to be as contentious a debate as it would have been a few years ago. In order to placate those with ethical concerns, the proposal also intends to strengthen Michigan's ban on human cloning and insure that it is illegal to give up embryos in exchange for money. Related proposals passed in several states during the past election cycle and I expect Michigan's to pass as well.

Personally, I intend to vote for the stem cell research amendment. I am with the majority of the populace in thinking that it is patently silly to oppose the use of discarded single cell embryos for important medical research. Even sillier is the fact that blocking important medical research flies under the banner of "pro-life," because I can't think of anything more pro-death than standing in the way of potential cures for diseases that claim thousands of lives every year. In addition, I would go even further and suggest that the selling of unused embryos to research facilities ought to be legalized. For one, I think allowing people to sell their unused embryos would make them more likely to donate them in the first place.

Second, I don't understand why it is that there is this view in our culture that something is okay until money gets involved. Why is it moral to give up embryos but immoral to do the exact same thing if you are given something in return? It's kind of the same attitude we have with sex; we say that consenting adults can do whatever the heck they want with each other but we want to arrest them if they pay each other to do the same. Personally I think if its illegal to have sex or give up embryos in certain circumstances just because money is involved then we should just abolish money altogether and go back to a society based on bartering, if not then we need to set a less hypocritical standard for our society than we do currently.

I feel the same way about the human cloning as I do about the ban on selling embryos; to me it's about a hundred times more ethical to clone an embryo than to abort one, yet that's legal and polls show that around 65% of our population favors keeping it that way. I don't understand how our society can ban human cloning on the basis that it is wrong for people to "play God" and yet they are doing the exact same thing by intervening in pregnancies to bring about their termination. Cloning is just another way of bringing about life whereas abortion terminates it.

I'm not sure where I stand on the legality of abortion itself but I can tell you that I see it and anyone who practices it as fundamentally unethical whereas I don't see anything wrong with replicating somebody's DNA inside of a zygote and implanting it into a woman's uterus so that it can be born and live out its life cycle just like the rest of us. The fact that many otherwise liberal minded people who see nothing wrong with abortion squirm at the thought of bringing about life through cloning is even more lost on me. Nonetheless, I don't expect my views on certain aspects of this proposal to outweigh my position that as a unified whole the stem cell research ballot proposal definitely deserves to be ratified.

The second ballot proposal that Michiganders will be voting on seems even less controversial on the surface than the first one, but according to some it's just a Trojan horse for Democrats to win control of the entire state government. The said proposal would cut the salaries both legislators and statewide elected officials significantly, it would reduce the number of members in both the State House and State Senate, shave two seats off the Supreme Court and ten off the Court of Appeals, ban retired government officials from lobbying for a period of two years after leaving office, cut healthcare and retirement benefits of former elected officials to the level of all other state government employees, and strengthen the ban on illegal aliens' ability to vote among other things. The proposal would save taxpayers a good deal of money and cut the size of government, something Republicans would usually support. Why then, are state Republican leaders complaining about this ballot proposal?

Republicans began complaining when a power point document was discovered on a labor union website that appeared to have been presented to union officials by Democratic Party surrogates in 2007. The document outlined how structural issues within the state government were preventing complete Democratic control and proposed various measures that might tip the electoral balance in the Democrats' favor.

The goal is for Democrats to control the redistricting process in 2011 so that the districts may be drawn in such a way as to benefit Democrats for the next decade. The catch is that in order to control the redistricting process, Democrats must already control the Governor, the Senate, the House, and the Supreme Court. The document declares that Democrats must do something now in order to set the stage for the 2010 elections or else their chance will never come (or at least it won't come again until 2021). They put forth a series of proposals that were almost identical to the ones wrapped up in the proposal on the ballot this November, the trouble was that this power point seems to have been made before the drive for the ballot proposal was really coming to fruition; in addition to this it seemed that the leaders of the allegedly non-partisan coalition backing the upcoming ballot measure are overwhelmingly Democrats. In essence they created a Democratic Party front group masquerading as a group of non-partisan populists demanding government reform.

So how exactly is it that these proposals would benefit Democrats specifically? First of all, fewer seats could force traditionally Republican rural areas constituting old seats to be split up and added to more suburban or urban districts, which would make seats either competitive or Democratic favored. Secondly, Republican backed judges currently control the Supreme Court and as a result the two justices who would be removed under the reform plan would be more likely to be Republican backed than Democrat backed.

Thirdly, the Court of Appeals is currently controlled by judges appointed by Republican Governor John Engler in the 1990s; there is no doubt cutting its size would remove several Engler appointees and tip the balance away from Republicans. Indeed, gaining control of the courts is more important than anything if the Democrats want to control the redistricting process, even more important than winning the governorship again in 2010. The recently uncovered power point document explicitly states that the proposed amendments would drastically reduce monetary costs for the Democratic Party in winning elections in the state and explicitly states that the Democrats plan to take advantage of a dissatisfied electorate to achieve their means, something they're doing through the Reform Michigan Government Now ballot initiative.

Looking at the past one finds that what the Michigan Democratic Party is doing is nothing new, in fact the Republicans have deliberately tipped the scales in their favor in the past and according to the Democrats the scales are still tipped in their direction. Regardless of what happened in years past, the behavior of the Michigan Democrats is unjustified. If their goal was to achieve actual fairness and even out the political scales I would have more understanding, but it is quite clear that they simply desire to tip the scales in their own direction for their benefit alone.

More shamefully, they have set up an allegedly non-partisan front group and used it to cloak an unethical power grab in populist language with the sole intent of sneaking their agenda right under the voters' noses. As a non-partisan libertarian I don't really care who wins or loses but corruption isn't something I tolerate so I give this proposal a strong thumbs down. However, I would oppose this proposal even if it truly were non-partisan in spite of the fact that it seems to accomplish several libertarian goals such as cutting salaries and benefits for politicians and reducing the number of positions in government. Once again I find that this proposal is not all it seems to be on the surface.

My main objection does not lie with cutting politicians' salaries; in fact I think that all political positions should be part time and pay a great deal less than they do now. My main objection is to reducing the number of seats in the legislature, which would actually probably make government bigger in spite of what it would seem on the surface. First, reducing the number of seats in the state legislature would shift influence away from local communities and toward more centralized power bases. The less locally oriented the representation, the less locally oriented the decisions made in the legislature and as a result the more centralized the state government becomes.

Second, the more centralized the power base the more aristocratic the representation becomes. The legislature becomes more and more of an exclusive club and because the districts require a broad base it also requires a stronger political machine within them to actually win office, the legislature will ultimately become restricted to career politicians and common citizens will be restricted from the legislature because the costs of running for office will have increased and the likelihood of winning will have decreased. In addition, decreasing the size of the courts will simply increase the likelihood of judicial activism that will erode the Constitution because it will be easier for those with an ideological agenda to attain a majority with fewer justices rather the many.

All in all, this ballot proposal would be a recipe for political corruption even if it weren't just a Trojan horse for the Democrats to gain power and as a result should be opposed by everyone regardless of party affiliation or ideology (unless of course, they are career politicians).

All in all I find the Michigan ballot proposals this year to be a mixed bag, one is relatively good and one is undeniably bad. Unfortunately, ballot proposals are often forgotten about in the context of a presidential election, especially in a toss-up state like Michigan.

Because their attentions are turned elsewhere and because they don't fully understand how important ballot initiatives are, many Michiganders will judge their votes on the proposals simply on the text of the proposals themselves without thinking about the ramifications and as a result I expect the abominable Reform Michigan Government Now initiative to pass.

There is no doubt that if things go as expected it will simply be yet another example of the dire results of the public's myopia. Of course, politics is politics and what we are seeing here is nothing new so we shouldn't be surprised, I know for a fact that I'm not. I leave you only with the wisdom of H.L. Mencken, who once said, "Democracy is the pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." As much as many of us don't want to believe Mr. Mencken, it seems that he is proven more and more right with each passing election cycle.

SOURCES

Text Of, "Cure Michigan Ballot Proposal," Cure Michigan

"Wide Public Support For Stem Cell Research," ABC News

"Attitudes On Abortion," Polling Report

Peter Luke, "Memo Pins Reform Proposal On Dems," Michigan Political Report

Paul Kersey, "Reform Michigan Government Now Proposal - UAW Connection," Mackinac Center for Public Policy

Text Of, "Reform Michigan Government Now Proposal", Reform Michigan Government Now

H.L. Mencken, "Notes On Democracy"