If you're planning on voting in the November election, you’ve already got a lot of homework to catch up with.
It might take half semester to get through the guide for statewide ballot measures alone.
The 17 propositions that have qualified so far run into hundreds of double-sided pages -- and a few more measures are pending, ahead of Friday's qualification deadline.
At the local level, several citywide propositions await San Diego voters.
Two of them are downtown stadium-oriented, filling 77 and 119 pages, respectively.
Where to start and stop?
“I think it's going to be (on) the measures that have to do with bonds, and sort of less-sexy issues like hospitals and taxes, that people might just throw up their hands and say, 'There's no way I'm going to wrap my mind around all this," says Voice of San Diego managing editor Sara Libby, who has closely followed this year’s ballot-cause campaigns.
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As a result, ballot ovals for a lot of propositions won’t get inked in.
Or, as Libby points out: “Once people get overwhelmed with a certain number of measures, they tend to just vote ‘no’ on everything.”
For taxpayers, it’ll be an unusually expensive election season – maybe the priciest ever -- in terms of printing, labeling and mailing costs to reach millions of voter households in California, and hundreds of thousands in San Diego County.
San Diego City Attorney Jan Goldsmith will brief councilmembers on the issue during a Wednesday special session.
While he believes there’s no legal requirement to put the provisions of the stadium-centric measures into text form, Goldsmith says he’ll recommend doing so.
"Some people are going to read the whole thing -- that's good.” he told NBC 7 in an interview Monday. “Some people are going to be offended that it costs too much, and that it's too big. That's what the city council's for and they represent all the people, and they can make that decision."
Pity the poor postal carriers who’ll have to deliver the freight.
