> Why do we entertain such nonsense at taxpayer expense?

What is being allowed is signature gathering for a proposed ballot initiative.

The reason this is permitted is that the powers of initiative, referendum, and recall, all initiated by similar petitions, are fundamental rights under the California Constitution that represent basic limits in the delegation of the power of government from the people at large (who are, ultimately, the highest authority in the government of the state) to the elected and appointed bodies who they employ to handle the day-to-day work of governing.

All the overblown “greenlights” means is that they have been found to have filled out the paperwork for the initiative correctly, basically; it's not a judgement on substance, and it just means they can move forward to try to get it on the ballot.

This is just allowing the author of the proposal to start gathering signatures on a petition at their own expense. Even getting the signatures doesn't make it law. We entertain this kind of nonsense because democracy must allow everyone to speak up, even the people with fringe opinions we sometimes call crazy.

His right to speak ends st my right not to die from measles because Gwyneth Paltrow has a gaping hole where her soul should be. Where harm to large populations is concerned, I’m more than happy to infringe on speech, and the courts agree.

This isn’t just crazy, it’s demonstrably damgerous.

> His right to speak

Her.

> ends st my right not to die from measles because Gwyneth Paltrow has a gaping hole where her soul should be.

And if the speech directly impacted your right with no intervening action, that would be relevant. You have a very good point about why the proposed law should not be adopted, and, if you can tie it to an actual superceding (e.g., federal) guarantee perhaps why it cannot be implemented even if it is passed.

But it is not an argument against the action actually undertaken here by the State, which is the ministerial act of certifying that a procedural requirement to exercise the state Constitutional right to circulate an initiative petition, which is several steps from implementing a law.

California's initiative process isn't the only way to do democracy. You can argue that it's too easy to get on the ballot, or that representative democracy is better than direct democracy.

If you don't have some measure of direct democracy, and one which trumps the decisions of representatives, you don't have any mechanism within the system by which citizens can withdraw consent from the system imposed on them by the dead hands of their ancestors.

If you consider free, uncoerced consent of the governed important, direct democracy has no substitute.

One can, of course, debate implementation details, but for the same reason erring on the side of too easy to get a proposal on the ballot is better than too hard. If it's too hard, essential choices are denied. If it's too easy, then there is a challenging in focusing on the choices of importance, but nothing is denied.