Yesterday, I received an email from the Connecticut Citizens for Ballot Initiative asking me

Do you support Connecticut Citizens having the right to a statewide initiative and referendum mechanism?

My initial reaction was mixed. I'm a big supporter of getting people more involved in how their government is run, and on the surface, it seems like ballot initiatives would be a good thing. But, when I thought about how they've been used, or perhaps abused, in other states, I had second thoughts.

From Pros and Cons of ballot initiatives there are several concerns expressed.

One of the objections to ballot initiatives is

Initiative proposals can be misleading. Some initiative proposals use oversimplified language, which means voters are at risk of making uninformed decisions.

Perhaps the initial question falls into this. Yes, I support Connecticut Citizens having the right to a statewide initiative and referendum mechanism. The real question is, what would that mechanism look like?

What should be the requirement to get an initiative on the ballot? The more questions we have, the more it will cost to have ballots printed. Should initiatives be only available to people who can come up with some sort of hefty filing fee? Should an initiative require some number of signatures to be gathered? Again, there's the cost of verifying the signatures. How many signatures should be required? Should there be some sort of distribution requirement of signatures?

As an example, to get on the Working Family Party line on the ballot, I had to gather about 100 signatures. Would it make sense to require at least 100 signatures from at least 76 different Assembly Districts?

Another concern about ballot initiatives is

Initiatives can be passed without any information about how they will be funded. There is no organized procedure (like a legislative hearing) to examine costs or how the initiative, if passed, will take away from other
necessary government programs.

This is related to the previous concern about people not being properly informed about a ballot initiative. Perhaps as part of the ballot initiative process, any initiative that gets enough petition signatures to be on the ballot should have a public hearing at the Legislative Office Building, similar to bills brought by legislators. In addition to that, perhaps such initiatives should go through the Legislative Commissioners' Office "to be checked for constitutionality and consistency with other law". Then, go through the Office of Fiscal Analysis to get an estimate of costs of the bill and the Office of Legislative Research to add a plain English explanation of the bill.

Another concern about the ballot initiative process is

Unlike candidate campaigns, there are no limits on contributions to ballot measure Campaigns. As such, wealthy individual and institutional donors can exert tremendous influence over the ballot measure process.

Should some sort of public funding of ballot initiatives be added to address this issue? Should rules be put in place to prohibit the use of paid signatures gatherers? Should there be a requirement about publishing the fiscal analysis and plain English explanations of the initiative? Who would pay for such publishing?

Yes, I support Connecticut Citizens having the right to a statewide initiative and referendum mechanism. It is a very important and very powerful mechanism that needs to be set up very carefully so that it doesn't become yet another method for powerful special interests to get their way at the expense of Connecticut Citizens.