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Keynoter Stuart Elway explains the 2002 voter's mind |
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Reprinted below is Stuart Elway's written version of the remarks he made during his keynote address at the 2002 Diamond Awards breakfast ceremony January 22, 2003. When I was here three years ago, we were trying to sift through the aftermath of I-695. In many ways, we still are. I looked over my remarks from that 2000 talk, just to make sure I wouldn’t give the same speech. But it looked pretty good. So I am going to reprise some of those same themes. The question of the day is this: How is it that R-51 lost so badly? I thought about entitling this talk: "Don’t Blame Eyman." And don’t blame the voters either. But our topic today is transportation, so let’s focus on R-51. Transportation had been voters top state priority for at least three years and near the top of the charts for about 6 years. In a survey we did
for The Seattle Times last September in Central Puget Sound:
So clearly transportation relates to people on a personal level in their daily lives. We don’t need a poll to tell us that. But the implications are new: Over half changed their lives in some way because of transportation and 1/3 had given serious thought to leaving the region – because of traffic. Over the years, I have developed a simple model to help me and my clients understand voter thinking about ballot propositions. There are three main elements: [1] The problem; [2] the proposed solution; and [3] the required/requested action. Voters need to understand all three, and agree with all three in order to take the action – which is usually to raise their taxes. In this case, there was little disagreement that transportation is a significant problem – for individuals as well as for the state and region. Transportation is a personal issue, but people also recognize it as a regional issue with economic, environmental and social implications. Agreeing on the existence of a problem is not the same thing as agreeing on the definition of the problem. Agreeing on a solution is even trickier. Any proposed remedy involves assumptions about the nature of the problem. Part of the definition of the problem involves understanding how it came about. In our survey last fall, Puget Sound residents mainly blamed growth and a lack of response to growth: Reasons for Congestion:
Note that nearly the same number said that a failure to build roads and a failure to improve public transit were to blame. This has implications for the proposed solutions. We asked that same sample about a number of possible remedies for congestion problems. We asked the question two ways: 1) would it help the region and 2) would it help you? Solutions (Region / Personal)
Several things to note here: 1) At least 4 in 10 said that 8 of the 9 solutions posed would be a "significant step" toward addressing the regions traffic problems. Any port in a storm. Just do something! 2) More than 6 in
10 said significant help would come from: 3) For all 9 ideas, more people said it would help the region than said it would help them, personally. The conventional interpretation is that people just want to get everybody else off the roads. An equally valid – if less cynical interpretation – is that people are looking beyond their own, narrow personal interest. REFERENDUM 51 So along comes R-51. Supporters spent $4 million on a campaign to fund transportation improvements around the state – something voters want. It loses by 2:1. The conventional wisdom is that R-51 failed because the tax was too high. There is no question that the amount of the tax and the price of gasoline factored into the equation. But I do not think it was about the money. Last year, in an unprecedented alignment, the media, political leaders, labor leaders, business leaders were all on the same side of not one, but three ballot measures: R-51, I-776, and I-790. You could add R-53 (unemployment comp.) and make it four measures. Voters voted against this extraordinary united front all four times! Clearly there is more going on than people upset about traffic. Or even about taxes. R-51 did not solve any problems. It looked like a legislative bill; "peanut butter" they call it. Spread the money around: A project here and project there. HOV lanes in King County and a stop sign in Moses Lake. Give everyone something to vote for. But it did not finish anything, and voters knew it. It would be like buying a house when all they told you was the down payment and the monthlies, not what the house cost. Or even what it would look like when – and if—it ever gets built. R-51 looked like a legislative bill because it was a legislative bill. It should have been passed by the legislature. The package became necessary because of a decade of neglecting to fund the transportation system. It got turned into a referendum in the wake of I-695. Voters have been saying over and over that they need to approve any tax increase. And a majority of the legislature believed them. But voters also have been pointing to transportation for years as a problem they want addressed. And they have been voting for solutions than never seem to materialize. They voted for Light Rail six years ago. In Seattle, they voted for the monorail 3 times. So had the legislature passed the gas tax last session, there would have been some grousing, but does anyone really think that a single legislator would have lost their seat over a vote on a 3¢ gas tax increase? (Which is the amount of the first year increase). There are two related answers to the question of why R-51 did so poorly. As I have said, voters did not see R-51 as a solution to the transportation problems. Its defeat was more about addressing the problem than it was about the money. The more difficult reason to address is that voters were not convinced that state and local government is spending their tax dollars effectively. It was no accident that the third bullet point on all the R-51 ads touted "accountability." They saw the same phenomenon that we have been looking at for a decade: voters’ distrust of government. Nearly half the R-51 opponents in our last poll said volunteered "government’s inability to spend the money efficiently or effectively" as their main reason to vote no. This is the part where I revisit my I-695 speech from three years ago, Those of you who were here then no doubt recall that we found throughout the I-695 campaign that the "second provision" – requiring a public vote on all future tax and fee increases – was actually more popular than the $30 car tax. I’m not sure a "vote on all tax increases" initiative would have passed. But Tim Eyman failed even to qualify a straight car-tax initiative the year before. The vote was about trust as much as it was about money.
But guess what? I-695’s effects got covered – no pain. Eyman was right! The Legislature, at the urging of the Governor, enacted the $30 car tab into law even though the state Supreme Court declared I-695 unconstitutional. The state went out of its way to cover the losses suffered by city and county governments. Why would we not expect the same result from a defeat of R-51? Voters are trained to know that if they defeat a measure, a new, smaller one will be offered. Probably the one that should have been offered in the first place because it must now be trimmed of the "fat" that must have been in the first measure. The natural response to the defeat will be to address the short-term problem: develop a shorter list of projects that will cost less. "What can we get for 3¢?" "Can we pass a 2¢ gas tax?" It’s the tried and true government way. No doubt there is merit in making government revisit its requests with a sharper pencil. The trap in this approach, however, is that it not only fails to address real needs by reducing the list of projects to be funded, but it also feeds voter skepticism, by developing another top down plan to sell to the voters, thus making the long-term problem of voter distrust even worse. The distrust is fed by the tendency of modern politics to treat voters as consumers, rather than as citizens. In politics the consumer model takes the general form of finessing the problem, hammering out a techno/political solution among the elites; then selling it to a preoccupied public on the basis of its own self-interest – usually cast in terms of money or fear. By treating people as consumers, modern politics plays a dangerous game. Because politics treats people like consumers, we should not be surprised that voters have started acting like consumers. What do consumers do? They SHOP. They try things on. If they don’t like them, they take them back! They try something else. They try to get the lowest price. If you treat people like consumers, they are more likely to act like taxpayers. If you treat them as citizens, they are more likely to act like partners. More is required of a citizen than of a consumer. Participating in government is more than choosing between Coke and Pepsi. There are two sides
to the democratic equation: citizenship and leadership. Both are required. The vote is a blunt instrument indeed, as we just learned again. The choice is always between two options only – yes or no; Republican or Democrat. It is up or down on the single question. By the time a question gets to the ballot, the subtleties are obliterated. The opportunities for modification and compromise are past. Citizenship implies responsibility: Responsibility for our own actions and responsibility for the health and well being of our communities and our society. Citizenship requires that we participate in the communal life of our society. It requires that we recognize societal and community interest as well as self-interest. Evidence from our surveys on traffic congestion indicates that people do have a larger perspective in mind. And what about leadership? A necessary part of leadership is to represent public thinking about current issues, of course. Another part is to help forge consensus for action by helping the public arrive at a reasoned opinion -- what Daniel Yankelovich calls "public judgment." This requires real communication. It requires deliberation – weighing alternatives and their consequences, not the pandering, one-way, thirty-second spot. It is not easy. Real communication is not easy. Actually communicating with someone requires that one listen as well as talk. It requires that one understand the other's point of view. But I fear that the alternative is a vicious circle of distrust between citizens and representatives – let’s face it, the representatives don’t trust voters any more than voters trust them -- which can only grind down our ability to govern. I recognize the distinctions between the grand conversation and the day-to-day task of running a company or an agency. And I recognize that we do not operate in a vacuum or some Athenian Utopia devoid of interest groups. But if you are going to lead and manage change, rather than be swept along by it, you must engage your public. The public weighs in sooner or later on the big decisions – another lesson from November’s vote. This means you must connect with your constituencies. You must involve citizens in the conversation about the goals as well as the means of achieving those goals. There is a need to clarify what you are doing and why. Public agencies need to demonstrate that public money is being effectively spent to produce real solutions to real problems. I mentioned earlier that it was no mistake that "Accountability" was always in the TV ads. But you cannot demonstrate accountability before the fact. You can promise it; you cannot demonstrate it. And, as we have seen, voters don’t believe promises of accountability. What gets labeled "accountability" in this discussion is two things, I think, neither of which is accountability: 1. Effectiveness. This is saying you are going to do something and doing it. Part of it is doing a better job of talking about the successes. Part of it is managing expectations. But there would be a lot less complaining about accountability in the transportation debate around here if there were a light rail line being built right now that resembled the plan people voted for six years ago. 2. Engagement. There would also be less concern about accountability if voters felt like they were being heard. Voters voted against the baseball stadium and got it anyway. Seattle had to vote for the monorail three times to get it. The road back to trust in government is a long one. And it leads through engagement. With modern communication technology we have new tools to engage citizens in the conversation about goals as well as the means of achieving those goals. I am not talking about instant plebiscites. This is still a republic. Our elected representatives still have to make the decisions. And I am not talking about endless process, where the last person into the room gets a veto. But I am thinking about a virtual town hall, where everyday citizens can be heard, and are expected to deliberate, not just choose. Nor am I talking about some techno-fix to systemic societal problems. But we do have new tools that allow us to think differently about how we engage the public. There is a lag between the possible and the practice. We talk about the disconnect between citizens and government. There is also a disconnect between the technology of today and the way our politics (small "p") is practiced. I am a believer in our representative form of government. But I do believe the decisions our representatives make will be better ones – and will be more likely to lead to sustainable public policy – if leaders act more like leaders and citizens are encouraged to act like citizens and not just passive consumers. |
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