But every time she voted, Cho felt like she was taking an English test, she said. She had no idea how to interpret the perplexing words and numbers on the ballot, and how they would affect her daily life and business.

“It must be difficult for even American people to understand the entire propositions on the ballot,” Cho said speaking in Korean. “Needless to say, it is almost impossible for foreign-born immigrants like me to understand them clearly.”

Cho shares the same problem as another 1.6 million foreign-born Asian immigrants in California who would like to perform simple tasks, like taking the drivers license test, in their native language rather than English.

Asian immigrants are among the fastest growing political groups in the United States and could be crucial to the outcome of upcoming legislative elections. According to research published on the website of the Asian-Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies, the Asian-American vote is especially critical in about 100 of the nation’s 435 congressional districts.

But language barriers do not completely turn immigrants away from the polling booth because they can still rely on voter guides in their native language. Flyers and newspapers in their own languages have been important sources in monitoring their ethnic group’s interest, and they often guided them where to mark on the ballots.

But the initiative process in California is so complex that it confuses not only English speakers, but people like Cho who could barely understand the issues presented in her own Korean voter guide.

Moreover, some political groups, realizing the clout that Asian voters will have in this election, can manipulate the vulnerable minorities to pass unpopular measures by exploiting their confusion.

In California, the requirements to put an initiative on the ballot are in many ways all too easy. As a result, propositions like raising taxes on tobacco, or limiting the government’s ability to take ownership of a private property, fill the pages of voter pamphlets every election year.

These flyers demonstrate how complicated today’s election is. For example, a flyer titled “Our California Latino Voter Guide” looks like a yes-no puzzle. Catch phrases like “No on 85,” “Yes 86,” “Stop 89,” and “No 90” are arranged in a row with the choices marked clearly to make it easy to remember; “NoYesYesNoYesNoNo…”

A TV commercial urging “Yes” on proposition X would normally be followed by the “No” commercial, all of which confuse the voter further.

Is all this confusion an inevitable side effect that we as citizens should expect to bear in order to achieve direct democracy? Perhaps not. Canada, for example, uses a similar type of initiative system, except it is much more difficult to get initiatives on the ballot. As a result, Canadian voters seldom vote on overly particular propositions, yet still make their will effectively known in the lawmaking process by participating in far more frequent congressional elections.

When the initiative system is allowed to muddle the issues, confuse voters, and distort democracy, this method of direct democracy should be reexamined. Because of all these issues, other democratized and multi-ethnic countries, like Canada, have rejected the Californian standards of the initiative system. A broader response from all over our ethnic groups is the key for the success of the democracy we intended.