That really seems to black/white for me: at some point you need to weigh the cost of starting over (along with the chance that starting over won't happen or will fail by default as people will say "didn't we reject this same thing last year?" without noticing the difference) with the cost of a compromise; imagine if absolutely everyone refused to ever budge or compromise on absolutely anything: if a single reason to disagree with a deal breaker... the world would simply be totally unworkable.
In some cases, (as some might argue is the case with 30 this year; I live in a town that is pretty much just a giant University, so I have gotten tirade after tirade about education funding), delaying by another year may also be too painful to bear for many people: some kind of relief, at least for them personally (as they are themselves voters, so imagine them making this choice for themselves at the ballot box) is required now, or you may as well just give up and not bother.
I mean, imagine if your choice were (combining the tradeoff I expressed for 39's largely innocuous energy funding clause with the despair many people felt surrounding 30) "vote for this thing that will continue to fund your profession as a lecturer and will keep college tuitions low enough that you will be able to afford to keep paying for your kid's education" or "vote no, get laid off, and tell your family things will be tight this year, all because someone threw in a rider that directs some of the funds to something you thought wasn't even bad, and probably needed funds anyway, but wasn't the most efficient way the money could have been spent"... would you seriously vote no? Would you judge someone else who did?
To me, those are not even remotely comparable, so you can't really use the same criteria for evaluation. On one hand you're talking about allocation of funds -- it's just money. On the other, you're talking about depriving people of fundamental rights.
When it comes to the latter, the litmus test I use is, "Is there a clear and urgent need for this law?" In this case, as horrible as human trafficking is, I do not believe that prop 35 passes muster on those grounds. Bear in mind that we're not talking about going from "no penalties for human trafficking" to "some penalties for human trafficking". It's going from significant penalties, to even more severe penalties. There is no urgent need for this law, and therefore no justification for skewering civil liberties.
In some cases, (as some might argue is the case with 30 this year; I live in a town that is pretty much just a giant University, so I have gotten tirade after tirade about education funding), delaying by another year may also be too painful to bear for many people: some kind of relief, at least for them personally (as they are themselves voters, so imagine them making this choice for themselves at the ballot box) is required now, or you may as well just give up and not bother.
I mean, imagine if your choice were (combining the tradeoff I expressed for 39's largely innocuous energy funding clause with the despair many people felt surrounding 30) "vote for this thing that will continue to fund your profession as a lecturer and will keep college tuitions low enough that you will be able to afford to keep paying for your kid's education" or "vote no, get laid off, and tell your family things will be tight this year, all because someone threw in a rider that directs some of the funds to something you thought wasn't even bad, and probably needed funds anyway, but wasn't the most efficient way the money could have been spent"... would you seriously vote no? Would you judge someone else who did?