A Shorter Ballot Would Be Better

There is a new controversy in the news regarding the CU Board of Regents. I'm not going to discuss it because I haven't investigated it enough to provide an intelligent opinion on it, and I'm not bothered to do so.

What I will say, is that voters in the State of Colorado vote on way too many things, about which voters are ill-equipped to provide intelligent input.

Easy Ways To Shorten The Ballot

We should not have an elected CU Board of Regents. We should not have an elected state school board. The C.U. Regents could be either appointed in the same manner as the governing body of the Colorado State University system, or partially in that manner and partially by University of Colorado alumni. The state school board should be appointed by the Governor with terms staggered so that a single Governor could only appoint a majority of the board after two full four year terms, so maybe one seat would be open every two years and there would be seven seats.

These boards shouldn't be inherently partisan and voters in the general public are simply ill-equipped to evaluate how well those board members are doing their jobs and how qualified the candidates for those positions are. 

We should not elect a state treasurer. We should not have elected county surveyors, county engineers, county treasurers, county assessors, or county coroners,  As an aside, the work done by coroners should be handled at the state or judicial district level, rather than the county level, because small counties don't have the resources to do that important job right. 

These are technocratic, non-partisan jobs that should be filled by civil servants selected on a non-partisan basis.

We should not have judicial retention elections (at least without some rare circumstance flagging a seat for needed one). And, as an aside, we should entirely abolish municipal courts.

While the way that we appoint judges is Colorado is very good, the retention elections product a 99% retention rate, and even with a government sponsored information packet, voters are simply not qualified to determine if judges are doing their jobs well enough to be retained. Routine retention decisions should be made be a body more qualified to evaluate the issues, such as by judges who have direct supervisory appellate authority over them, and a strengthened judicial discipline system. It would make sense to have recall elections on a basis comparable to that of recall elections for elected public officials, when a large group of citizens petitions for the recall of a particular judge, but they should not be held as a matter of course. Retention elections are the single greatest factor that makes Colorado ballots too long, and add very little value.

Municipal courts are problematic in multiple ways. They aren't appointed in the meritocratic way that state court judges are appointed. They are independent of the municipal government and can be removed promptly if the municipality appointing them is dissatisfied with their rulings even if those rulings are right on the merits of the law. And, there is a well demonstrated track record of abusive and irregular judicial decisions by municipal judges. Municipal courts not of record are particularly lawless. 

We should not elect a state secretary of state, county clerks, county election officials, or local government clerks. In part, this is because we should not have partisan elected officials conducting election administration as the state's Secretary of State and county clerks do. In part, this is because non-partisan technocratic tasks shouldn't be done by elected officials.

We should eliminate the post of Lieutenant Governor, eliminating this additional impotent and rarely relevant post from serving as static in the Governor's race, and instead have a order of succession in which other members of the Governor's cabinet, perhaps the attorney general (whether elected or appointed), and then other members of the cabinet, serve if the Governor cannot.

At the state level, this would leave the Governor, the state attorney general, and state legislators on the ballot. There would also be an elected district attorney in each state judicial district (most of which are multi-county).

At that county level outside of Denver and Broomfield which are consolidated cities and counties, this would leave only county commissioners and a county sheriff as partisan elected officials. Personally, I'd prefer that the number of county commissioners be increases from three to five in larger counties and perhaps even seven in the largest counties, with a politically appointed sheriff, rather than an elected sheriff, mostly because this would make it easier to remove a sheriff who was clearly behaving badly. But this is a closer call, because the county sheriff makes policy decisions and is not merely a technocratic civil servant, and because the county sheriff's performance is easier for the average voter to judge.

At the local level, this would leave a local council, a mayor in some larger cities, and in Denver, a city auditor.

Removing all of these partisan races from the ballot would also, indirectly, reduce the burden on voters by reducing the number of races for which nominees would have to be chosen in the state's caucus plus primary election system.

Regional Transportation District directorships are a necessary evil to some extent. This is a body that makes political decisions on how to run RTD that don't neatly correspond to partisan categories, with taxes it raises on its own, which voters should have a direct say upon the spending of, but doesn't neatly correspond to any other political subdivision with general purpose elected officials, since it involves multiple counties (some partial and some full). Making the directorship elections non-partisan is also a good choice. But, we would be better served if the RTD director elections were held all at once for four year terms, rather than being staggered, so that the press and the public could collectively think about RTD politics all at once, rather than piecemeal in a way that dilutes attention from the races. Perhaps this would make the most sense in the year following a Presidential election, so that these elections wouldn't have to compete for attention with partisan local, state, and federal political contests.

I actually support the TABOR requirement to have citizens vote on tax increases, which insulates candidates running for public office from opposition out of fear that the candidates would raise taxes. But, we should not have TABOR elections to determine if increased revenues, from taxes that have already been approved by voters, should be retained - the state should be "de-Bruced" across the board.  

We should not have ballot issues to approve renewals of already approved public debt levels that involve no new taxes and no increases in the nominal amount of outstanding voter approved government debt. I favor ballot issues to approve increases in taxes to pay for government bonds, or increases in the amount of debt incurred that will necessarily have to be paid for with taxes at some point. But, voters shouldn't be required to routinely reapprove existing taxes and already approved debt levels.

Lots of provisions of the state constitution, and of county and city charters, which require voter approval to change, should be in state statutes or local ordinances that can be changed by elected legislators.

For example, details like the organizational chart of the City and County government and election deadlines, both of which are found in the City and County of Denver's charter and have been the subject of recent ballot issues, shouldn't be in the city charter.

Those are the easy ways to shorten the ballot. 

Extra Credit 

There are also other ways that it could be shortened that are closer calls.

We should end the use of property taxes to fund public schools and should replace those with state legislature approved spending from revenues from state income tax dollars. I've explored why this is a good idea in other posts at this blog. If this was done, it would also make sense to have local school boards elected by the parents of public school students, on a one student, one vote basis, rather than by members of the general public.

The state legislature should have the state senate elected by a party list proportional representation system. A bicameral body in which both houses are elected on the same single member district plurality system adds little value, compared to the burden it adds to voters researching who to voter for in state legislature elections. Proportional representation in the state senate would provide a structural check against gerrymandering, would facilitate a multiparty system that isn't entirely beholden to the internal baggage of the two major political parties, and would allow diffuse minority political views to receive a voice. State senators could continue to serve four year terms with roughly half of its 35 members elected every two years, but the entire state would cast their ballot every two years. The limited number of seats: 17 or 18 in each state general election, would also impose a de facto minimum level of support of 5.5%-5.8% to be elected, denying truly fringe parties a vote. And, it doesn't take much effort for a voter to decide which of half a dozen or so political parties they support. Party lists could be drawn up through each political party's internal caucus system.

One could also make the state attorney general appointive, and/or could have district attorneys appointed by the state attorney general. There are pros and cons to this approach. An elected attorney general eliminates the need for independent counsel to investigate the executive branch and would provide a better mandate to serving as a Lieutenant Governor ex officio and to appoint district level attorneys general. But, similar arguments to RTD and county sheriffs apply to elected district attorneys and would make it harder for a single partisan elected official to decide criminal justice priorities for an entire state with diverse views on that issue.