REPUBLICAN PUNDITS would like you to believe that the defeat of Prop. 1A was all about taxes. Democrats will tell you that the dysfunction leading up to the defeat of the propositions is all about the two-thirds requirement to pass a budget.

But it's more complicated than that.

Researcher David Binder's recent widely quoted poll shows an electorate which was in no mood to sign off on the labyrinthine measures but had no taste for the draconian cuts which are in our future, either. Of the 1,008 voters surveyed, 603 voted in the special election and 405 did not. Of those respondents, only 36 percent of those who voted wanted a cuts-only budget. Of those who did not vote, only 24 percent preferred such a scenario.

Polling by the Public Policy Institute of California also supports this notion.

But what Binder's poll really proved is that the voters overwhelmingly considered the special election a failure of the legislature and the governor to do what they were elected to do.

BUT WHY IS THAT? Most Democrats I talk to put the blame squarely on the aforementioned two-thirds dilemma. But this requirement has been in place since 1933. What has changed? Research shows that over the years the two parties have grown farther and farther apart in ideology, making it difficult to reach the sort of compromise needed to pass a supermajority budget on time.

Adding to the blockade, last year most of the state's Republican legislators signed Grover Norquist's "No Tax Pledge," and ostracized those who broke ranks in February.

While good legislation gets passed every week in Sacramento with bipartisan cooperation, it is the highly publicized budget battles which paint a picture of total dysfunction and linger in the voters' minds.

MOST OF US BELIEVE in a system of checks and balances. But what do you do when one party will not compromise in budget negotiations? Democrats tried an end-run budget last January which didn't need a two-thirds approval. The governor vetoed it.

So now the talk is of a Constitutional Convention with the hope of reducing the majority needed to pass a budget to 55 percent. We are only one of three states which requires the two-thirds. The Republican "my way or the highway" mentality may just end up depriving them of the only power they have.

And this is unfortunate because undoing the two-thirds will not help foster the spirit of bipartisanship, the ultimate goal of our legislative process.

"California's day of reckoning is here," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said in his address today. "We have 14 days to act before the state runs out of money."

Fat chance.