An interesting study says that many ballot measures are written at the Master's Degree level and voters skip them due to the complex wording.
Wyoming requires that a majority of ALL voters must say yes to pass a referendum, not just a majority of those who voted on the issue. They figure if a voter skips an issue, it is worded too hard to understand since the average American has an eighth grade reading level.
Here is an excerpt from the Wall St. Journal's review of the issue:
Another totally different new study rates the readability of ballot measures.
The study is part of the plain language movement.
Note to Floridians: "When Charlie Crist of Flordia took office as governor in January 2007, one of his first acts was to issue a plain langugage executive order
. Florida now has an entire site devoted to plain language." HOWEVER, the links now go to Gov. Rick Scott's website and go to an error page. We did find that the FL DCS has a Plain Language page HERE. We could not find if the Plain Language movement is required for State ballot measures, however.
Researchers with the Plain Language Action and Information Network ( http://www.plainlanguage.gov/ ) examined 1,112 ballot measures from states from 1997 to 2007. They were trying to find out if the readability of the ballot language affected voters’ behavior.
They found that, regardless of the topic, the more difficult the ballot measure was to understand the less likely citizens were to vote for it.
Wyoming voters have demonstrated the same reaction.
A ballot measure must get yes votes from a majority of the voters who cast ballots in an election. Getting a majority of votes on the measure itself isn’t enough to pass it.
When a tally shows that a large number of voters skipped the ballot measure entirely it probably was too confusing.
According to an article in State Legislature magazine, the average reading level for Americans is eighth grade.
The reading level of Wyoming ballot measures between 1997 and 2007 was at the master’s level, grades 17 to 18.
So it’s not surprising that many voters here gave up on the measure and didn’t vote.
Help is available, though.
Now the Legislature and staff members who write the ballot explanation have a guide — the Flesch-Kincaid scale — available to Microsoft Word users.
The scale assigns the grade level needed to understand the reading.
Of the 45 states that had statewide ballot initiatives in the 10-year period studied, none had measures at the eighth grade reading level.
Only three came close. The states of South Dakota, Oklahoma and North Carolina had ballot measures with high school reading levels.
More than a dozen states had doctorate reading levels.
Anyway, Wyoming citizens will find proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot when they go to the polls in November.
