BALLOT PROPOSITIONS AND INFORMATION COSTS - DIRECT DEMOCRACY AND THE FATIGUED VOTER

Ballot propositions have attracted a great deal of attention in recent years, not least because they have become an increasingly important part of the democratic process in the U.S., and the especially in California. Yet voters seem increasingly disenchanted with this process. One way of understanding voter reaction to propositions is to conceive of them as presenting voters with a set of decisionmaking costs which they seek to minimize. Developing hypotheses from this simple basis allows us to make us to make a series of predictions of likely voter turnout on ballot propositions. We find that ballot position, proposition type, and spending patterns have statistically significant impacts upon the decision of voters to express a preference for or against a given proposition.