The Arizona budget stalemate, which continues even now, is a very interesting case study for political scientists.
Never has the difference been so evident between two phrases that are often mistakenly used as synonyms: the “will of the people” (e.g. the opinion held by a majority of the citizens) and the “will of the voters” (the opinion held by those who actually vote — which may be a tiny minority of the population as a whole).
Yet in Arizona’s representative democracy, even the “will of the voters” is schizophrenically fragmented, as different elections with different turnouts produce conflicting instructions for our exasperated public servants.
It is ironic that all three factions (Gov. Jan Brewer, the Republican legislators and the Democrat minority) are trying their best to be responsible to their constituents, and yet are all being accused of irresponsibility for opposite reasons. Surely, someone must be in the wrong. Arizona is either spending too much or not enough, and this should determine whether spending cuts or tax increases should be the larger component of the solution.
Like a few other states, Arizona has a robust voter-initiative process that allows legislation to be passed at a November general election instead of the Legislature. The Arizona electorate is politically moderate with its large numbers of independents who do not identify with any party.
Thus, the balance of public (and voter) opinion tends to fall on the side that Arizona is not spending enough — on education mainly, but also on a few other public programs — resulting in initiatives such as Proposition 301 (which raised sales taxes to support education) wherein the voters have done for themselves what their representatives have refused to do.
Meanwhile, the members of the Legislature are elected in obscure, low profile September primary elections that frequently see turnouts of less than a quarter of eligible voters. As general election voters in Arizona tend to include many independents (almost 30 percent) who often do not exercise their right to vote in the Republican primary election, the few who do vote in those primaries are disproportionately conservative compared to the overall population.
While our most conservative Republican citizens are out-voted in the general statewide elections — where numerous expensive propositions have passed over their opposition — they have maintained, through primary elections, a stranglehold over the Legislature, whose Republican majority thus mirrors their minority viewpoint that Arizona’s education system and other public programs are overfunded and need to be cut.
Indeed, it is difficult to blame our legislators for acting contrary to the wishes of the general-election population when their future depends on the intensely ideological (or selfish, depending on your point of view) voters of the primary elections. Brewer’s sales tax proposal has the support of 60 percent of voters in a recent Cronkite/Eight poll. But the Republican primary voters will not willingly pay a cent to save the state, and they will have their legislators’ heads if the legislators allow such a vote to occur.
The result is a vicious cycle, in which voters force our state to provide increasingly expensive services, the minority-dominated Legislature attempts to force cuts to those services by decreasing the revenue available to the state, voters respond by passing even more initiatives that are constitutionally immune from legislative cuts, and legislators lash out in ever greater frustration at what few programs they are allowed to control.
We have voted ourselves into a corner as reality closes in from all sides. Can we vote ourselves an escape?
Kenneth can be reached at kenneth.lan@asu.edu.
