After stewing an awfully long time, B.C. Keith came up with what she saw as a simple solution to the lack of gender equality at the state Capitol.

Keith drafted a 30-word proposal to ask voters to amend the California Constitution to require that half the state's legislators be women. She submitted the handwritten letter, along with a $200 filing fee, to the state attorney general this week.

The Sacramento woman's proposed voter initiative would double the number of state legislators to 240, requiring that voters in each of the state's 80 Assembly and 40 Senate districts elect one female and one male representative.

"I just felt that it was necessary to have equal representation," said Keith, a retired engineering technician for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

She's not worried about the political implications of doubling the number of state legislators, though she acknowledged that finding space under the dome for all those members could prove problematic.

"The Memorial Auditorium is sitting there empty much of the time," she offered, suggesting where the extra lawmakers could convene.

Dozens of proposed ballot measures are submitted to state officials for each election year. Most never make it to the ballot. Those that do are often carefully crafted and vetted by attorneys and political consultants.

Keith, a member of the Green Party whose most recent political involvement was collecting voter signatures to qualify the 1996 ballot measure legalizing medical marijuana, decided to take advantage of California's direct democracy system and go at it on her own.

"I understand you are the expert to make sure voter's initiatives are correct," she wrote in a handwritten letter to the attorney general's office. "Sometimes legal terminology makes things confusing. I have tried to keep this as simple as possible."

Once the attorney general drafts a title and summary for her measure, Keith will have 150 days to gather the more than 800,000 valid voter signatures needed to qualify her constitutional amendment for the November 2012 ballot.

Keith said the $200 fee "was worth it because there must be thousands of people more knowledgeable than I am, certainly about politics, and nobody was doing anything. … You just have to scratch (your) head and ask yourself why."

Without money or organizational backing, she'll face long-shot odds of accomplishing that task all on her own. But she felt she had to at least give it a try.

"You just can't complain all the time," she said. "You have to get out and do something."

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Call Torey Van Oot, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 326-5544.

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