This is a fairly simple concept: you should not be forced to pay a fee for someone who does not have a fiduciary duty to you. The broker works for the landlord. The landlord should pay them. Simple.
At least the arguments up top have obvious perverse incentives.
The controversy is created by the people who have something to lose by it passing, and they somehow manage to fool voters into believing their bullshit "but regular people will be hurt because X!" justifications. And voters for some reason don't look at the background of the people who support or oppose these sorts of things to see where their interests are aligned.
I don't really know how we get to the point where we have an educated, informed electorate, where people are resistant to misinformation, and think critically about what a yes or no vote actually means, filtering out arguments made by people with sneaky ulterior motives.
Personally I think people should be strongly discouraged from voting on issues that they don't understand. When I fill out my ballot (California & SF, so there are always quite a few ballot propositions), I try to do my best to read about each proposition, arguments for and against, and take at least a cursory look at the people doing that arguing, but honestly there are still probably some I should leave blank, as I don't fully understand the consequences of a yes/no.
> you should not be forced to pay a fee for someone who does not have a fiduciary duty to you
This is one reason why I'm glad real estate purchase commissions are getting shaken up (the other is breaking up monopoly abuse). The current/previous commissions structure is bonkers.