The California Legislature is so inefficient, Californians have taken to numerous ballot measures and initiatives.

The November ballot will challenge that confidence voters have in themselves. It contains 16 measures, including 12 put there by initiative. Several of them are competing and contradictory; one seeks to undo something the Legislature did last year; and a couple would force the taxpayers to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars to finance the pet projects of their sponsors.

There are even two measures already abandoned by their initial supporters.

Proposition 65 originally was pushed by local government officials to protect their coffers from state raids. But after qualifying that measure for the ballot, the local honchos gave up on it and settled with the governor on a similar alternative, which is now Proposition 1A.

Proposition 68, which would expand casino-style gambling to card rooms and race tracks, was doing so poorly in the polls that its proponents quit campaigning after spending millions to promote it. A rival measure, Proposition 70, which would expand gambling on Indian reservations, is still active, although Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is fighting hard to defeat it.

Five different measures deal in one way or another with health care.

The biggest is Proposition 72, a referendum on legislation passed last year to require businesses employing more than 50 workers to provide health insurance to their employees. A "yes" vote means you want health insurance mandated and controlled by the government. A "no" vote rejects that approach.

Proposition 63 would slap a surtax on million-dollar earners to pay for a dramatic expansion of mental health care in California. Proposition 67 taxes telephone calls to fatten emergency room budgets.

Proposition 61 would borrow $750 million (costing about $50 million a year to repay) to build more children's hospitals. Proposition 71 would borrow $3 billion (annual cost: $200 million) to make California the international center of stem-cell research.

There are two criminal-justice measures. Proposition 66 would scale back the state's "three strikes" sentencing law, passed by the voters in 1994, so that repeat felons would face life in prison only if their third strike was a violent crime.

Proposition 69 would allow the state to take DNA samples from everyone arrested for a felony.

Proposition 64 would limit lawsuits alleging corporate wrongdoing, while Proposition 59 would give the public greater access to government records.

Proposition 62 would eliminate partisan primaries in state elections and replace them with a system that lets the top two finishers in each primary election, regardless of party, move on to a run-off. Legislators opposed to Proposition 62 placed Proposition 60 on the ballot to try to preserve the status quo. And Proposition 60A, originally part of Proposition 60 as an unrelated sweetener, was turned into its own measure by a court that ruled the Legislature had violated the constitutional provision against combining separate subjects in one ballot measure. It would require that revenue from the sale of surplus property be used to repay debt.