The Grid: Electrical Infrastructure for a New Era

by Gretchen Bakke

In addition to an admirably thorough public information campaign, PG&E sponsored a ballot measure that would change California law to require a yes vote by two thirds of all the residents in a community in order for that community to “aggregate” and then defect from their existing utility. The wording is important. PG&E’s measure sponsored not a two-thirds majority of the votes actually cast in an election—already a difficult task—but a two-thirds majority reckoned in terms of the total population of an aggregating area. Given that voter turnout in the United States rarely tops 60 percent, even in hotly contested races, the success of this ballot measure would have virtually ensured that no community in the state would ever manage to gather the necessary votes to secede from their utility.