DOCSLIB.ORG

The 2004 Venezuelan Presidential Recall Referendum

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The 2004 Venezuelan Presidential Recall Referendum Statistical Science 2011, Vol. 26, No. 4, 517–527 DOI: 10.1214/09-STS295 c Institute of Mathematical Statistics, 2011 The 2004 Venezuelan Presidential Recall Referendum: Discrepancies Between Two Exit Polls and Official Results Raquel Prado and Bruno Sans´o Abstract. We present a simulation-based study in which the results of two major exit polls conducted during the recall referendum that took place in Venezuela on August 15, 2004, are compared to the of- ficial results of the Venezuelan National Electoral Council “Consejo Nacional Electoral” (CNE). The two exit polls considered here were conducted independently by S´umate, a nongovernmental organization, and Primero Justicia, a political party. We find significant discrepan- cies between the exit poll data and the official CNE results in about 60% of the voting centers that were sampled in these polls. We show that discrepancies between exit polls and official results are not due to a biased selection of the voting centers or to problems related to the size of the samples taken at each center. We found discrepancies in all the states where the polls were conducted. We do not have enough information on the exit poll data to determine whether the observed discrepancies are the consequence of systematic biases in the selection of the people interviewed by the pollsters around the country. Neither do we have information to study the possibility of a high number of false or nonrespondents. We have limited data suggesting that the dis- crepancies are not due to a drastic change in the voting patterns that occurred after the exit polls were conducted. We notice that the two exit polls were done independently and had few centers in common, yet their overall results were very similar. Key words and phrases: Exit poll data, Venezuelan recall referendum. arXiv:1205.3320v1 [stat.ME] 15 May 2012 1. INTRODUCTION timing and the validity of the process that led to A presidential recall referendum (RR) took place the RR actually taking place. The Organization of in Venezuela on August 15, 2004. A tense political American States (OAS) sent a delegation chaired by debate preceded the RR, the main issue being the its Secretary General to negotiate a solution. The Carter Center, led by President Jimmy Carter him- Raquel Prado is Associate Professor, Department of self, played an important role in getting the govern- Applied Mathematics and Statistics, Baskin School of ment and the opposition to agree on a course of ac- Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1156 tion. The Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE) was the High Street, Mail Stop: SOE, Santa Cruz, California official body in charge of the organization of the RR. 95064, USA e-mail: [email protected]. Bruno Sans´o is Professor and Department Chair, Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, Baskin School of This is an electronic reprint of the original article Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1156 published by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in High Street, Mail Stop: SOE, Santa Cruz, California Statistical Science, 2011, Vol. 26, No. 4, 517–527. This 95064, USA e-mail: [email protected]. reprint differs from the original in pagination and typographic detail. 1 2 R. PRADO AND B. SANSO´ Table 1 possibility of fraud in the recall referendum. Other Official results of the 2004 Venezuelan recall referendum related references include Delfino and Salas (2011) Number votes % of votes and Taylor (2007). In particular, for the S´umate and Primero Justicia exit polls, Hausmann and Rigob´on Registered voters 14,037,900 100% show that there are no significant differences be- Casted votes 9,815,631 69.92% tween the official results for the centers in those Number votes % of casted votes polls and the official results for the overall popula- Yes votes 3,989,008 40.64% tion, thus indicating that the selection of the polled No votes 5,800,629 59.10% centers was not particularly biased. Invalid votes 25,994 0.26% In this study we find significant discrepancies be- tween the S´umate and PJ exit poll results and the official results for the majority of the voting cen- Since the RR was seen by all parties involved as ters. We also find (via a simulation study) that the a pivotal event, several organizations set up schemes discrepancies are neither due to chance nor to the to collect exit poll data. In this work we study data exit polls taking too small a sample for each center. from two exit polls collected independently by S´u- While most of the centers in the exit polls were op- mate, a Venezuelan nongovernmental organization erated with voting machines, some manual centers (NGO) and Primero Justicia, a Venezuelan political were also sampled. We consider this small subgroup party. S´umate (http://sumate.org/index.html) separately, since the analysis in these cases is compli- defines its mission as that of “building democracy.” cated by the presence of invalid votes. Invalid votes It played a leading role in the process of collecting are virtually nonexistent for the automatic centers. the signatures needed to call the RR. Primero Justi- S´umate has produced a report on the entire refe- cia (http://www.primerojusticia.org.ve) is a rel- rendum process (S´umate, 2004), which is available atively young party that campaigned actively to re- from their web page. The Carter Center has produ- call the President. The exit poll samples were col- ced two reports, one on the audit of the RR results lected during the day when the RR took place, at (The Carter Center, 2004) and a final report about a number of voting centers around the country. As observing the RR process (The Carter Center, 2005). seen in Table 1, the official results of the recall (avail- Both reports are available at www.cartercenter.org. able from www.cne.gov.ve) were 40.6% in favor of The exit poll data analyzed here were provided recalling the president (Yes vote) and 59.1% against by S´umate. The data are available from S´umate recalling the president (No vote). There was a per- upon request. The official data on the recall referen- centage of 0.3% of invalid votes. These results are in dum were obtained from the official CNE web site sharp contrast with the exit poll results. According www.cne.gov.ve. to S´umate, the percentage of Yes votes was 60.7% and according to Primero Justicia, the percentage 2. EXIT POLL DATA of Yes votes was 60.5%. The large observed discrepancies between these 2.1 S´umate Exit Poll exit polls and the actual official results immediately triggered discussions among experts and nonexperts The exit poll conducted by S´umate consisted of in Venezuela questioning the validity of the polls a sample of 269 voting centers, out of 8279 total and the official results. One of the arguments raised centers. These were located in 23 of the 24 states against the exit polls was that the selection of the and federal entities. The exception being the State polled centers was biased. Another was that exit of Delta Amacuro. Only one center was polled in polls were conducted only until early in the after- each of the states of Cojedes and Amazonas. In all noon, while many of the voting centers stayed open other states at least two centers were polled. Vot- until late at night. Yet another argument was that ing centers in Venezuelan embassies and consulates the exit polls were biasedly conducted by interview- were not included in the polling. A total of 23,827 ers who were prone to choose pro-Yes voters and people were interviewed in these centers. This corre- that No-voters were less inclined to respond to these sponds to a population of 945,074 voters registered polls. in such polled centers. The exit poll was designed Hausmann and Rigob´on (2004) present a compre- by S´umate and the American polling firm Penn, hensive discussion of several issues regarding the Schoen and Berland Associates (PSB). According EXIT POLLS IN THE VENEZUELAN RECALL REFERENDUM 3 Table 2 reason, only 24 out of the 269 centers chosen to be Example of hourly reporting form for the S´umate exit poll polled by S´umate were polled until 11:00 pm. corresponding to the time 7:00–8:00 am We have access to a database where the samples Age are recorded every two hours, as they were reported <30 30–50 >50 by the pollsters. We observed that the data collec- Gender Target Polled Target Polled Target Polled tion process was, for most centers, very regular. We were able to calculate the overall target for each Male 1 2 1 Female 2 2 1 center and compare that to the effectively observed Total 3 4 2 sample. This is important to establish if a center was strongly above or below target. We notice that be- ing below target does not provide useful information to S´umate, the pollsters were volunteers who were about the nonresponse. Indeed, there could be many trained and supervised by S´umate and PSB for more factors affecting the fact that a pollster collected less than a month. They were instructed to follow a pro- samples than planned. tocol to guarantee that the sample had the least pos- 2.2 Primero Justicia Exit Poll sible bias. In particular, strong emphasis was given to the fact that the pollsters should not be iden- The exit poll conducted by Primero Justicia (PJ) tified as members of S´umate or any other politi- consisted of a sample of 258 voting centers located cal group.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Would You Let This Man Drive Your Daughter Home? Public Sector Focus, August/September, August 30Th, Pp.14-17
    Dorling, D. (2019) Would you let this man drive your daughter home? Public Sector Focus, August/September, August 30th, pp.14-17. https://flickread.com/edition/html/index.php?pdf=5d67acffb3d60#17 Would you let this man drive your daughter home? Danny Dorling In the early hours of July 19th 1969, a few days before the first man stepped on the moon; a car swerved on a bridge in Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts. Ted Kennedy, the 37-year-old younger brother of the President of the United States of America was at the wheel. The car plunged into the water. Ted managed to swim free. He left Mary Jo Kopechne, his 28-year- old passenger to die in the vehicle. At some point, as it slowly submerged, she drowned. Ted notified the police of the accident ten hours later. Another man had recovered the vehicle and found Jo’s body. Jo was very pretty, a secretary, a typist, a loyal political activist and a dedicated Democrat. She died just over a week before her 29th birthday. It was at first seen as a joke when Lord Ashcroft asked the question ‘Would you rather allow Jeremey Hunt or Boris Johnson to babysit your children’.1 The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that ‘in a curious little snippet from the weekend. According to a poll by Lord Ashcroft, only 10 per cent of voters would let Boris Johnson babysit their children.’2 However, it was more than curious, some 52% of all voters said they would not allow either of the two candidates vying for the leadership of the Conservative party such access to their children.
    [Show full text]
  • Exit Poll 25Th May, 2018
    Thirty-sixth Amendment to the Constitution Exit Poll 25th May, 2018 RTÉ & Behaviour & Attitudes Exit Poll Prepared by Ian McShane, Behaviour & Attitudes J.9097 Technical Appendix Sample Size Fieldwork Location The sample was spread Interviews were conducted throughout all forty Dáil face-to-face with randomly The results of this opinion constituencies and undertaken selected individuals – poll are based upon a at 175 polling stations. representative sample of throughout the hours of 3779 eligible Irish voters polling from 7am to 10pm in aged 18 years +. accordance with the 1992 Electoral Act. 2 Technical Appendix Informational Reporting Accuracy Coverage Guidelines Extracts from the report may The margin of error is Three questionnaire versions be quoted or published on estimated to be plus or minus were fielded. Each version condition that due 1.6 percentage points on the included five common acknowledgement is given to five common questions and questions, along with six to RTÉ and Behaviour & plus or minus 2.8 percentage eight questions unique to Attitudes. points on the questions that particular version. unique to each of the three questionnaire versions. 3 Research Methodology ● A face-to-face Exit Poll was conducted among voters immediately after leaving polling stations on Referendum Day, 25th May, 2018. ● An effective sample of 3779 voters was interviewed. ● The Poll was undertaken in all forty Dáil constituencies. ● 175 polling stations were sampled, distributed proportionate to the Referendum Electorate in each constituency. ● A list of the electoral divisions at which surveying was conducted is included in Appendix A. ● The questionnaires used are included in Appendix B.
    [Show full text]
  • OPINION and Exit Polls Remained at the Centre Of
    Published in: Seminar. 539; July 2004; 73-77 Understanding polls and predictions OPINION and exit polls remained at the centre of media attention both during the 2004 election and after, though for different reasons and with a difference in our attitude towards them. The media attention on polls was heightened by the attempt initiated by the Election Commission to ban opinion polls and exit polls. It witnessed on the one hand a unanimous agreement among various political parties in favour of the ban and, on the other, a near unanimous expression of disapproval of the ban from the media houses. The Supreme Court’s refusal to ban the exit poll in the recently concluded elections notwithstanding, many have suggested that media must exercise restraint in publishing them during the election process. However, both the visual and print media in the country was vying with each other to inform the public with the latest status of each political party with respect to the seats they would eventually win. It was precisely for these predictions that the pollsters were once again in the spotlight, though this time as the underdogs. In the above context it may be worthwhile to critically examine the implications of opinion and exit polls for democracy. Though there was some debate on this in the media itself but sadly most arguments seem to centre around the primacy of ‘evidence’ and ‘facts’ in support of either the camps that condemn the purported ban or welcome such a ban, reflecting a ‘positivist’ prejudice that worships ‘facts’ as a ‘holy cow’.
    [Show full text]
  • Vietnamese Glossary of Election Terms.Pdf
    U.S. ELECTION AssISTANCE COMMIssION ỦY BAN TRợ GIÚP TUYểN Cử HOA Kỳ 2008 GLOSSARY OF KEY ELECTION TERMINOLOGY Vietnamese BảN CHÚ GIảI CÁC THUậT Ngữ CHÍNH Về TUYểN Cử Tiếng Việt U.S. ELECTION AssISTANCE COMMIssION ỦY BAN TRợ GIÚP TUYểN Cử HOA Kỳ 2008 GLOSSARY OF KEY ELECTION TERMINOLOGY Vietnamese Bản CHÚ GIải CÁC THUậT Ngữ CHÍNH về Tuyển Cử Tiếng Việt Published 2008 U.S. Election Assistance Commission 1225 New York Avenue, NW Suite 1100 Washington, DC 20005 Glossary of key election terminology / Bản CHÚ GIải CÁC THUậT Ngữ CHÍNH về TUyển Cử Contents Background.............................................................1 Process.................................................................2 How to use this glossary ..................................................3 Pronunciation Guide for Key Terms ........................................3 Comments..............................................................4 About EAC .............................................................4 English to Vietnamese ....................................................9 Vietnamese to English ...................................................82 Contents Bối Cảnh ...............................................................5 Quá Trình ..............................................................6 Cách Dùng Cẩm Nang Giải Thuật Ngữ Này...................................7 Các Lời Bình Luận .......................................................7 Về Eac .................................................................7 Tiếng Anh – Tiếng Việt ...................................................9
    [Show full text]
  • Status of Opinion Polls
    ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 Status of Opinion Polls Media Gimmick and Political Communication in India PRAVEEN RAI Vol. 49, Issue No. 16, 19 Apr, 2014 Praveen Rai ([email protected]) is a political analyst at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. Election surveys are seen as covert instruments used by political parties for making seat predictions and influencing the electorate in India. It is high time opinion polls take cognizance of the situation to establish their credibility and impartiality. The very mention of the word opinion Poll[i]” immediately brings to the mind of people in India election surveys, exit polls[ii] and seat predictions that appear in mass media every time an election takes place in the country. Psephology, the study of elections, began as an academic exercise at the Centre for the Study of Developing Studies (CSDS), Delhi in the 1960s for the purpose of studying the voting behaviour and attitudes of the voters. Psephology is now equated with pre poll surveys and exit polls which are being rampantly done by media houses to predict the winners during the elections. It has now been reduced to a media gimmick with allegations that it is used as communication tool for influencing the voters by a conglomerate of political parties, media and business houses with vested interests. Media houses and television anchors in India have become the modern day “Nostradamus” in using opinion poll findings in forecasting election results, before the actual votes are cast, which have gone wrong on many occasions. Accuracy of sample surveys depend on the following factors: one, the sample should be large enough to yield the desired level of precision.
    [Show full text]
  • The Exit Poll Phenomenon
    Chapter 1 The Exit Poll Phenomenon n election day in the United States, exit polls are the talk of the nation. Even before ballot- O ing has concluded, the media uses voters’ responses about their electoral choices to project final results for a public eager for immediate information. Once votes have been tallied, media commentators from across the political landscape rely almost exclusively on exit polls to explain election outcomes. The exit polls show what issues were the most important in the minds of the voters. They identify how different groups in the electorate cast their ballots. They expose which character traits helped or hurt particular candidates. They even reveal voters’ expectations of the government moving forward. In the weeks and months that follow, exit polls are used time and again to give meaning to the election results. Newly elected officials rely on them to substantiate policy mandates they claim to have received from voters. Partisan pundits scrutinize them for successful and failed campaign strategies. Even political strategists use them to pinpoint key groups and issues that need to be won over to succeed in future elections. Unfortunately, these same exit poll results are not easily accessible to members of the public interested in dissecting them. After appearing in the next day’s newspapers or on a politically ori- ented website, they disappear quickly from sight as the election fades in prominence. Eventually, the exit polls are archived at universities where only subscribers are capable of retrieving the data. But nowhere is a complete set of biennial exit poll results available in an easy-to-use format for curious parties.
    [Show full text]
  • Exit Polls Showed Him Ahead in Nearly Every Battleground State, in Many Cases by Sizable Margins
    The Center for Organizational Dynamics operates within the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Arts and Sciences, Graduate Division, conducting research and scholarship relevant to organizations, public affairs, and policy. Copyrights remain with the authors and/or their publishers. Reproduction, posting to web pages, electronic bulletin boards or other electronic archives is prohibited without consent of the copyright holders. For additional information, please email [email protected] or call (215) 898-6967 A Research Report from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate Division, School of Arts & Sciences Center for Organizational Dynamics The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy Steven F. Freeman1 [email protected] 2 December 29, 2004 Most Americans who listened to radio or surfed the internet on election day this year sat down to watch the evening television coverage thinking John Kerry won the election. Exit polls showed him ahead in nearly every battleground state, in many cases by sizable margins. Although pre- election day polls indicated the race dead even or Bush slightly ahead, two factors seemed to explain Kerry’s edge: turnout was very high, good news for Democrats,3 and, as in every US 1 I would like to thank Jonathan Baron, Bernard B. Beard, Michael Bein, Mark Blumenthal, James Brown, Elaine Calabrese, Becky Collins, Gregory Eck, Jeremy Firestone, Lilian Friedberg, Robert Giambatista, Kurt Gloos, Gwen Hughes, Clyde Hull, Carolyn Julye, John Kessel, Mark Kind, Joe Libertelli, Warren Mitofsky, Michael Morrissey, John Morrison, Barry Negrin, Elinor Pape, David Parks, Kaja Rebane, Sandra Rothenberg, Cynthia Royce, Joseph Shipman, Jonathon Simon, Daniela Starr, Larry Starr, Barry Stennett, Roy Streit, Leanne Tobias, Andrei Villarroel, Lars Vinx, Ken Warren, Andreas Wuest, Elaine Zanutto, John Zogby, and Dan Zoutis for helpful comments or other help in preparing this report.
    [Show full text]
  • Election Forensics and the 2004 Venezuelan Presidential Recall Referendum As a Case Study Alicia L
    Statistics Publications Statistics 2011 Election Forensics and the 2004 Venezuelan Presidential Recall Referendum as a Case Study Alicia L. Carriquiry Iowa State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/stat_las_pubs Part of the Statistics and Probability Commons The ompc lete bibliographic information for this item can be found at http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/ stat_las_pubs/21. For information on how to cite this item, please visit http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/ howtocite.html. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Statistics at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Statistics Publications by an authorized administrator of Iowa State University Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Election Forensics and the 2004 Venezuelan Presidential Recall Referendum as a Case Study Abstract A referendum to recall President Hugo Chávez was held in Venezuela in August of 2004. In the referendum, voters were to vote YES if they wished to recall the President and NO if they wanted him to continue in office. The official results were 59% NO and 41% YES. Even though the election was monitored by various international groups including the Organization of American States and the Carter Center (both of which declared that the referendum had been conducted in a free and transparent manner), the outcome of the election was questioned by other groups both inside and outside of Venezuela. The oc llection of manuscripts that comprise this issue of Statistical Science discusses the general topic of election forensics but also focuses on different statistical approaches to explore, post-election, whether irregularities in the voting, vote transmission or vote counting processes could be detected in the 2004 presidential recall referendum.
    [Show full text]
  • Racial Gerrymandering and Republican Gains in Southern House Elections
    Journal of Political Science Volume 23 Number 1 Article 4 November 1995 Racial Gerrymandering and Republican Gains in Southern House Elections Donald Beachler Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.coastal.edu/jops Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Beachler, Donald (1995) "Racial Gerrymandering and Republican Gains in Southern House Elections," Journal of Political Science: Vol. 23 : No. 1 , Article 4. Available at: https://digitalcommons.coastal.edu/jops/vol23/iss1/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Politics at CCU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Political Science by an authorized editor of CCU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. RACIAL GERRYMANDERING AND REPUBLICAN GAINS IN SOUTHERN HOUSE ELECTIONS Dona!,dBeachler, Ithaca College Introduction During the 1980s, southern House elections were characterized by two important results. 1 First , the Republican party made no net gains in southern House seats over the course of the decade. In the 1980s Democrats dominated congressional and state politics in the South by constructing bi-racial coalitions. Southern Democratic nominees were moderate enough to win white votes which, when combined with overwhelming African-American majorities , produced electoral success in many cases. 2 The failure to gain seats in the South, a region where the GOP had dominated presidential politics in most elections since 1972, 3 was a major reason Republicans failed in their drive to gain a majority in the House of Representatives during the Reagan-Bush years. However, the House elections of 1992 and 1994 proved a boon to southern Republicans as they gained nine southern House seats in the election of 1992 and an additional 16 seats in 1994.
    [Show full text]
  • Long Live the Exit Poll
    Long Live the Exit Poll D. James Greiner & Kevin M. Quinn Abstract: We discuss the history of the exit poll as well as its future in an era characterized by increasingly effective and inexpensive alternatives for obtaining information. With respect to the exit poll’s future, we identify and assess four purposes it might serve. We conclude that the exit poll’s most important function in the future should, and probably will, be to provide information about the administration of the fran- chise and about the voter’s experience in casting a ballot. The nature of this purpose suggests that it may make sense for academic institutions to replace media outlets as the primary implementers of exit polls. Is the exit poll intellectually dead? That is, in the foreseeable future, can exit polling serve a purpose other than allowing media operations to “call” elections a few hours earlier than of½cial results become available? This process of calling elec- tions, and the race among media organizations to be the ½rst to do so, may serve a recreational pur- pose; but whether calling elections contributes much to a thriving democracy is uncertain. Even if we consider a set of questions crucial to the social sciences and law about the nature of the electorate, it is still not immediately clear that exit polls have much of a future. Suppose we want to learn about the characteristics and motivations of voters. Are we better off with the exit poll–cur- rently around forty-½ve years old–or with a com- bination of older (mail, telephone) and younger (Internet) forms of polling, which may now be able to provide a great deal of information more cheaply D.
    [Show full text]
  • Exit Polls: Do They Need an Exit?
    EXIT POLLS: DO THEY NEED AN EXIT? Piyush Mishra* AnkurJain* Introduction On 141 September 1999, a Constitutional Bench' of the Supreme Court of India dismissed the writ petition of the Election Commission seeking enforcement of its guidelines banning publication/ telecast/ broadcast of exit and opinion poll results by the media during the period of elections.' Earlier, on 8th September, a Full Bench of the Supreme Court had referred the matter to a Constitutional Bench, as it felt the matter involved substantial questions of constitutional importance, including the freedom of speech and expression.! Also, another Full Bench of the Supreme Court heard an interlocutory application' and a stay was granted till the matter was decided by the Constitutional Bench. The Election Commission was forced to withdraw its guidelines because the Supreme Court was disinclined to accept the contentions of the Commission. As of now, the Election Commission has withdrawn its guidelines and, therefore, the controversy has abated. However, matters of substantial Constitutional importance are involved in the controversy, viz., the nature of guidelines of the EC exit polls and opinion polls and their standing in a constitutional democracy in the context of the freedom of speech and expression. This article attempts to analyse the controversies and legal issues involved therein. The Dilemma of Exit Polls Like any other statistical device, exit and opinion polls are prone to errors. The DD-DRS in 1998 and DD-CSDS in 1996 were almost on target while Lokmat in 1999 and TVI-ORG in 1998 were wide off the mark. * m Year, B.A., LL.B.
    [Show full text]
  • County Initiative Guide
    County Initiative Guide Candace J. Grubbs, County Clerk-Recorder/Registrar of Voters Elections Division 155 Nelson Avenue Oroville CA 95965-3411 Phone: 530-552-3400 Fax: 530-538-6853 Website: http://buttevotes.net This guide was developed in an effort to provide general information concerning county initiatives. It is for general information only and does not have the force and effect of law, regulation or rule. In the case of conflict, the law, regulation or rule will apply. It is distributed with the understanding that the County Clerk- Recorder/Registrar of Voters is not rendering legal advice and, therefore, this guide is not to be a substitute for legal counsel for the individual, organization or committee using it. Persons using this guide must bear full responsibility to make their own determinations as to all legal standards and duties. For information on municipal initiatives, please contact your City/Town Clerk’s Office. Revised February 9, 2016 INTRODUCTION The initiative process is the power of the people of California to propose statutes and amendments to the California Constitution (Cal. Const., Art. II, §8(a)). Generally, any matter that is a proper subject of legislation can become an initiative measure; however, no initiative measure addressing more than one subject area may be submitted to the voters or have any effect (Cal. Const., Art. II, §§ 8(d) and 12). An initiative measure is placed on the ballot after its proponents successfully satisfy their requirements described in these guidelines. All code sections quoted refer to the California Elections Code, unless otherwise stated. Table of Contents The Initiative Process .....................................................................................................
    [Show full text]