Why California voters may struggle to understand their ballots
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Illustration: Eniola Odetunde/Axios
With Election Day nearing, reading California's ballot measures may be making you feel like you need to go back to school. Join the club.
The big picture: Those ballot measures require a college-level reading ability to fully understand, per a new Ballotpedia analysis.
Why it matters: Ballot measures give Californians a direct say in state policy, but complicated language can make it harder for voters to understand exactly what they're being asked to approve or reject.
State of play: The state's ballot titles average a 15.3-grade reading level — roughly equivalent to that of a college junior.
- That's below the national average of 17th grade, but still well beyond a typical high school education.
- At an average of 11.9 words apiece, California's ballot titles are relatively short, but that doesn't necessarily make them easy to understand.
- The analysis examined 14 California ballot measures appearing before voters in the Nov. 3 election.
Stunning stat: The summaries accompanying California's ballot measures are even harder to read, averaging a 16.6-grade reading level — beyond a typical four-year college education.
- That's higher than the national average of 15th grade, meaning California's ballot titles are easier to read than the national average, but its summaries — which average 30.6 words each — are more difficult to understand.
Zoom in: Not all California propositions are created equal when it comes to readability.
- Prop 37, concerning a homebuyer program, has a title written at an eighth-grade reading level.
- Meanwhile, Prop 38, which would fund immunotherapy research, has a summary that clocks in at a staggering 25th-grade reading level.
- Prop 44 on healthcare spending and Prop 45 on limiting CEQA reviews also have summaries scoring at a 25th-grade level.
Behind the numbers: Ballotpedia's readability scores estimate the years of education needed to understand a text based on factors such as sentence length and word complexity.
- The scores reflect the complexity of the language, not whether voters actually need a college degree to understand the measures.
- They also don't account for voters' familiarity with the issues or whether the language accurately explains a measure's effects.
Between the lines: California's attorney general is responsible for writing the official titles and summaries for the 14 measures examined in the analysis.
- That puts the responsibility for balancing legal accuracy with language voters can easily understand in the hands of the state's top legal office.
The bottom line: California's ballot titles may be easier to read than the national average, but understanding what's on the ballot can still feel like a college-level assignment.