Referendum 88 pretends to help minorities without preferences or quotas. That is a lie.
Please read it carefully.
R-88 is as intentionally misleading as it is racist.
The ballot title dishonestly says “affirmative action, without quotas or preferential treatment (as defined,” but Section 3.11(d) defines “preferential treatment” as “using race as the sole qualifying factor to select a lesser qualified candidate.”
Thus, decisions based 99 percent on race would be perfectly legal, no matter how unjust. Imagine a white cop shoots a black kid and says “his race was just part of the reason I shot him, not the sole reason.”
I hope no one would accept that, yet that is precisely R-88’s guiding principle.
3.11(c) permits de-facto quotas if they are called “goals,” “timetables” or “diversity.”
Section 5 creates a massive unelected and unaccountable “Commission on Diversity Equity and Inclusion” responsible for monitoring and enforcing de-facto quotas.
The central premise of R-88 is that government must inflict discrimination on innocent citizens whenever it suspects that someone else of a “protected” demographic has been discriminated against.
This may (or may not) reduce some arbitrary statistical “disparity” on some quota sheet, but it does not prevent discrimination (it is discrimination). Neither does it help individuals who actually were discriminated against.
It only inflicts harm and injustice on innocent people and perpetuates racial animosity.
Reject R-88.
