Propositions

It would place California on the cutting edge of transportation in America. It would be a job creator. Environmentally clean. And fun. But can we afford it? The state is essentially broke and running on red ink. School and health programs already have been cut, and more slashing seems inevitable. The economy is sputtering, and tax revenues are tanking. Capitol politicians are gridlocked -- have been for years -- on how to honestly balance the state's books.

If Long Beach voters reject a $571-million bond measure devoted to infrastructure projects, Mayor Bob Foster warns, the state's fifth-largest city could face some serious long-term consequences. "The streets are still going to be in bad shape," Foster told 17 members of the El Dorado Park West Neighborhood Assn. this month at Keller Elementary School. "The water quality will still be in bad shape. Our fire stations won't be fully functional."

We already know this is the year of the first "YouTube election," where the most reliable place to find the latest footage everyone was talking about was no longer CNN, Fox News or the broadcast networks but rather from one of 10 dozen websites that undoubtedly already had the clip parsed, posted and ready for inhalation. The Web has become a political junkie's cornucopia, overflowing with excerpts of every kind. If you're like me, you yearn for the good old days, when October meant being bombarded with a small number of expensive political advertisements -- the ones that just told us what to believe already, so we didn't have to waste time figuring it out. But all is not lost.

The only argument of substance being raised against Proposition 11 is that taking legislative redistricting away from self-serving legislators would hurt minority communities. But now a nonpartisan think tank debunks that notion. Prop. 11 would strip away the Legislature's power to draw its own districts and turn over the once-a-decade chore to a 14-member independent citizens commission. Its only goal would be to draw sensible, logical districts -- rather than to protect incumbent lawmakers.

Proponents of the transportation package known as Measure R say its impact would be transformative in traffic-plagued Los Angeles County. Its half-cent sales tax increase, if approved, would begin the so-called Subway to the Sea, get the Green Line light rail to Los Angeles International Airport, widen the 5 Freeway at the bottleneck before the Orange County line and add carpool lanes.

Ballot measures: An article in Section A on Saturday about billionaires sponsoring state propositions on the Tuesday ballot was accompanied by one wrong photograph. The man identified in the caption as Henry T. Nicholas III, who is backing Propositions 6 and 9, was actually Henry Samueli. Nicholas is pictured here. The Times regrets the error.

There's a small, innocuous bond proposal at the tail end of Tuesday's state ballot that could get trampled if voters are in a knee-jerk, no-spending mood. And that would be a shame. Proposition 12, a $900-million bond to continue the Cal-Vet home loan program for California veterans, is the only spending measure on the ballot that would pay for itself.

It was a good day for chickens and children's hospitals, but not for alternative-fuel vehicles and Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens. A law-enforcement funding measure fell flat, but a proposition restricting parole was victorious. Voters may have banned same-sex marriage, but they rejected a measure that would have required parents to be notified before a girl could obtain an abortion.

Robert M. Stern and Tracy Westen make good points. For example, it should take a supermajority to pass an initiative that calls for a supermajority. But they miss the most needed revision. For ballot qualification, California should forbid paid signature gathering. Requiring a large number of interested voters to spend their time gathering signatures, instead of a small group of people who spend their money, would significantly democratize the proposition process and reduce the number of propositions.

Although the presidential primary is the main attraction on the Feb. 5 ballot, Californians will also decide on seven statewide propositions, including one that would give many sitting lawmakers more time in office and four that could nullify Indian gambling compacts passed this year by the Legislature. Voters are also being asked to decide whether community college fees should be reduced and the schools guaranteed a certain share of the state budget. There are some strange twists.