I have to admit, I'm in awe of the Yes on 17 campaign. Its new TV ad is so brazenly misleading, I found it breathtaking. In a bad way, admittedly, but breathtaking nonetheless.

The ad begins by stating, "There is only one place to get the facts about Prop. 17: the official voter guide." Then, as it displays the guide in the background, it proceeds to quote not from the impartial, fact-checked title, summary and analysis section  but from the spin that the Yes on 17 campaign inserted in the arguments and rebuttals section. As the fine print on the bottom of that section's pages states, "Arguments printed on this page are the opinions of the authors and have not been checked for accuracy by any official agency."

Not checked for accuracy, indeed. The ad wastes no time in veering from facts into fiction. "A flaw in current law penalizes responsible drivers by forcing them to give up their continuous coverage discount if they want to switch insurance companies," the narrator intones. Umm, no. It's not a "flaw" in the law, unless you consider the insurance overhaul that voters adopted in 1988 (a.k.a. Proposition 103) or the regulations that implemented it to be inherently flawed. Proposition 103 expressly barred insurers from considering "the absence of prior automobile insurance coverage" as a factor in setting premiums. And in 2002, the insurance commissioner declared it a violation of this provision to give a "continuous coverage discount" to new customers simply because they'd been insured by a rival carrier.

More important, the discount offered today is based on actuarial studies that show that drivers cost an insurer less (in terms of claims) the longer they stay with the company. Confusing correlation with causation, the Yes on 17 campaign argues that the practice of renewing one's insurance year after year shows responsibility, and that translates into more careful driving. But this argument overlooks the data showing that riskier drivers are more likely than safe drivers to change insurance companies, and to do so multiple times. Why? Because insurers encourage them not to renew by jacking up their rates after their driving record sours.

In other words, drivers who stay with one insurer are a less risky subset of the group of drivers who remain continuously insured year after year. So why would insurers offer the same discount to both groups? Under state law, any discount or rating factor must have "a substantial relationship to the risk of loss." I'm not a lawyer, but my reading of Proposition 17 suggests that the same would be true for the new continuous coverage discount. If so, insurers would have to make an independent actuarial showing for the current loyalty discount and the new one for continuous coverage. And given the different risks posed by the two groups, wouldn't that result in a different discount?

The Yes on 17 campaign, for its part, maintains that the discount would be the same. According to its new ad, the proposition "allows drivers to keep their continuous coverage discount even if they change insurers." But just to be clear, that's the Yes on 17 campaign's opinion. Not fact.

-- Jon Healey