It's been my observation both in California and other states that propositions are really just a way for politicians to duck responsibility for the things they were already going to do by creating results that seem to suggest they have the people behind them.
In the end, a lot of props are out of the Frank Luntz school of polling questions. How you ask the question has much more to do with the response than the actual question.
Make a proposition and tell people what it will buy them with selective and optimistic language, and they will be hard-pressed to vote no.
Make a proposition with honest language that displays all the pros and cons, and it gets harder to push it through.
