This was somewhat true 10 years ago (maybe even 5) but if you pay attention to things recently the moneyed interests have been 1. left-wing (because of Actblue and Bernie fans donating $25) 2. losing (Steyer, Bloomberg, every non-Trumpist Republican) or 3. both (Bernie, Amy McGrath). The guy who just won the presidency had the worst fundraising and spent the least.
What actually happens in the US is that rural and elderly middle-class voters control everything, and they mostly want entertaining culture war and no policy changes.
to be fair issues/petitioned amendments are very much money pays. It's pretty expensive to get signatures to get on ballot. Lots of states have rules like getting _% in each local HD or whatever.
And then the money spent on persuasion.
Uber recently in CA comes to mind.
Kind of beautiful in its blunt honesty; a legal method for corporations having a good chance of changing the law specifically how they want without having to deal with those pesky lawmakers.
Of course citizens can do it too! We got decriminalized mushrooms here in denver because of it!
The CA proposition system is bad, but I think it's because it makes us vote for things we don't understand. All kinds of interest groups regularly get on there, not just the plutocratic/corporate ones, but it's usually to do bad things.
The worst one is Prop 13 but everyone really did benefit at the time - of course it ruined the state for anyone who hadn't been born or moved there yet.
And the reason there's a really confusing prop about dialysis every election is that a labor union is putting them all on the ballot literally to troll the dialysis companies they're trying to unionize. Nobody actually wants them.
It does seem to work when representatives would be too embarrassed to vote for something, so that's why states are using it to legalize drugs.
The language has to be approved by a committee so it's supposed to be 'fair' and clear.
But I know campaigns poll it before they submit. The first sentence is really important. Especially in Colorado at least before we're tilting blue it was impossible to pass tax increases (we have TABOR which generally in most cases throws new tax measures to the citizens) so they always focused on for instance shall _ fund education by increasing __ by .1% etc
That's how we passed MJ legalization! I worked on that campaign did digital ads. We focused on medical stories, showing a young girl (I think seizures). And Denver just decriminalized mushrooms. Very exciting.
But the opposite can be true unfortunately. Even in CA prop 8 is a sad example of group think discrimination. A danger of majoritarian Democracy.
What actually happens in the US is that rural and elderly middle-class voters control everything, and they mostly want entertaining culture war and no policy changes.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/david-shor-cancel-cu...
Democratic donors are more left-wing than voters:
https://twitter.com/dbroockman/status/1254924463952388097