DON'T VOTE IF YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND.(Viewpoint) - Daily News (Los Angeles, CA)

Byline: JILL STEWART Capitol Punishment

DON'T know? Don't vote! In most elections, once voters choose the ``top of ticket'' races for president and major candidates, roughly 20 percent fail to vote for state measures and lesser political races. These people are often called lazy.

I stand in praise of drop-off voters. They are Ballot Box Grown-ups. They wouldn't dream of accidentally voting for a cause that, if they knew more, they would in fact hotly oppose. The real turkeys are the earnest types who complete their ballots, not knowing what they just voted for.

This befuddled bunch, out in force on Nov. 2, will exercise its right to participate in ... God knows what. They are urged on by noxious do-gooders who call such activity ``democracy.'' No, it's not. It's dumb-ocracy.

California's 16 ballot measures, freighted with murky language and unintended consequences, only encourage the Clueless Guessers. How about this: After you've voted for stuff you truly know something about, resist being ``part of the process.''

Take Proposition 66. It would significantly roll back ``three strikes, you're out.'' It's a well-intended, popular measure that, upon closer examination, makes me exceedingly queasy. To crib a line from a well-known politician, I was going to vote for it before I decided to vote against it.

Today, 42,000 people are locked away under ``three strikes.'' You can be forgiven if you believe many committed petty theft. The media have turned the guy stealing socks into an emblem of the law's inhumanity. You can Google all day long and find very few articles about the crime-infested neighborhoods that ``three strikes'' has scoured of many thousands of career criminals.

Just 357 of these 42,000 committed shoplifting or other petty crimes. But our legislators (your legislators) were afraid to give ``soft on crime'' ammo to anyone running against them. So the gutless wonders in Sacramento refused to fix ``three strikes.'' They let 357 people rot.

Attorney General Bill Lockyer, a liberal Democrat, says Proposition 66 takes a chain saw to a law that needed surgical repair.

Say a vicious criminal is doing life for burning down somebody's store, but an even worse disaster was averted when everybody got out safely. Under Proposition 66, the vicious arsonist didn't maim anybody (not for lack of trying). So he's not violent!

Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley led a movement to fix ``three strikes'' by never prosecuting on petty crime. Almost every California D.A. now follows suit. As Cooley notes, Proposition 66 releases vicious felons. ``Get ready for an unprecedented wave of crime in California,'' says Cooley.

It may not even be the most misleading idea on the ballot. The fine print in many incomprehensible measures will bring more misery than solutions.

There's Proposition 72, to shift the health insurance crisis onto the backs of schools and modest businesses. Watch for massive worker firings as businesses try to cover stiff new costs. Expect widespread job losses at restaurants, small factories and warehouses. Schools will raid education funds to pay health insurance for irresponsible employees who dine out - but don't buy health insurance.

My insurance is a killer, costing more than my utilities, phones and Internet bills combined. But I know the people I work for are not my mommy. There's a good reason why only Hawaii has this Socialism Lite plan: It's terrible public policy.

Then there's Proposition 63, the wildly popular tax on millionaires, which extensively expands mental illness treatment. This massive new treatment bureaucracy will be wholly reliant on funding by highly mobile millionaires. It's important to know that big chunks of millionaires disappear from California without warning. When thousands vanished in 2001 and 2002, their departure removed $16 billion, over two years, from California tax revenues - a little-reported but key cause of our tailspin.

When millionaires vanish again, who foots the bill for a permanent new treatment bureaucracy? One guess.

And look at Proposition 65 and Proposition 1A. They are supposed to stop Sacramento legislators from raiding city and county treasuries. Yet not even somebody who reads Sanskrit for pleasure can decipher them. I expect Prop. 1A to win, solely because it's at the top of ballot. Clueless Guessers love to vote for the first ballot item.

I'm not suggesting anyone stay home Nov. 2. But when you get to items you know diddly about, why not choose democracy and not dumb-ocracy? Spare us your need to feel ``involved.'' If you don't know, don't vote.