Category: initiative, referendum, and recall

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Division and Democracy

Recalls of elected officials are said to be “divisive.” And, I guess, to an extent they are. The elected official being recalled seems to take it personally.

At times, democracy can be messy and unpleasant, since we don’t all agree on everything, including whether the guy or gal the majority of us reluctantly agreed to in the last election deserves to finish out his or her term of office. Across America, where citizens have access to the process, elected officials are recalled pretty infrequently, though more often recently than in yesteryears.

Politicians with power are more often running amok, so no wonder citizens exercise this democratic check “more often.” What’s the alternative?

Some would say wait until the next election. But sometimes waiting years for the next election is potentially too damaging or dangerous. This is even more so where democracy is more fragile, say in Egypt.

In this most populous Arab nation, street protests against the elected government were followed by a military coup d’état, tanks thundering down Main Street, the arrest of the president and other government officials, violent street battles and shootings of unarmed citizens protesting the government’s removal.

As official Washington decides whether or not to call it a coup — in effect, whether to fund those who carried out the overthrow —  it dawned on me that a democratic process whereby elected leaders can be peacefully removed — i.e., recall — is a whole lot better and safer than street protests and military coups.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall judiciary U.S. Constitution

No Right to Defend Your Rights

You have no right as a voter to defend your interests as a voter. Not in federal court.

So decides the Supreme Court in Hollingsworth v. Perry, a case about a controversial California ballot question. The court ruled 5-4 that petitioners “lack standing.” Their interest wasn’t “particularized” enough.

Passed in 2008, Proposition 8 amends the California constitution to stipulate that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

Two questions must be distinguished. One, whether Proposition 8 is consistent with the U.S. Constitution. The high court could have agreed with the lower one that it isn’t. Two, whether voters – in this particular case, the official state recognized proponents of the measure – may judicially defend a law brought to ballot by themselves and duly enacted, when state officials decline to defend that law.

I’m no fan of Prop 8. But for the land’s highest court to rule that voters and petitioners have no “standing” here is a horrid precedent. It tells government officials to take heart if they dislike a law that voters have passed. Maybe not enforce or defend it at all, say — and regardless of any constitutional finding. After all, what can We the People do? It’s not as if we have standing!

Justice Kennedy, in dissent, pinpoints the default: “the Court fails to grasp or accept . . . the basic premise of the initiative process . . .  The essence of democracy is that the right to make law rests in the people and flows to the government, not the other way around.”

Oh, yes, the people do have standing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall Second Amendment rights

A Voter Revolt

The signatures are in: 16,199 of them — twice as many as needed to initiate the first recall election of a state lawmaker in Colorado history.

The target of voter ire? Senate President John Morse. He ticked off his El Paso County constituents by spearheading the recent triple whammy of gun control legislation that neatly bypassed Colorado voters earlier this year.

You may remember the controversy. The three bills in question, signed by the governor as emergency legislation so that no voter referendum was possible, elicited widespread negative reactions in the state, including nearly every county sheriff in Colorado publicly opposing the bills.

So, why did the sheriffs oppose the legislation, while Democrats in the legislature passed the bills?

Like state legislators, sheriffs are elected. But, unlike legislators, sheriffs deal with self-defending citizens qua citizens, as well as criminals and victims, on a regular basis. Such experience brings a different perspective, and makes sheriffs more skeptical of blunt legislative solutions.

Traditionally, Democrats — despite the fondness demonstrated by their party constituencies for increased government control over private weapons — tend to treat the issue of “gun control” with some modicum of care. At least, those in the mid-west and western states tend to.

But Senator Morse did not.

Morse won the senate seat back in 2010 by fewer than 350 votes, with a Libertarian Party candidate racking up 1,320 votes — almost 5 percent. Libertarians are strongly pro-Second Amendment. Yet, Morse treated his narrow victory as a call for sweeping change. A mandate!

He may reap the “reward” for such “courage.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Arkansans, Call Your Lawyers

Seeing how the IRS flagrantly violates the civil rights of Americans, do we really need more government agents, more bureaucracies to ride herd over our political endeavors?

Arkansas’s Senate Bill 821, an unconstitutional slap at citizens who dare propose ballot measures, was passed despite my many, many, many complaints, and is being implemented as Act 1413.

The law mandates that every paid petitioner read the Secretary of State’s booklet explaining the state’s initiative process. But the booklet didn’t even exist . . . until now.

It explains: “The Secretary of State’s Office has attempted to incorporate the changes made by Act 1413 into the procedures that follow. However, since the changes in the law were extensive, it may be helpful to review Act 1413 of 2013.”

How nice of the Secretary of State not to use the term “extreme” and to go, instead, with “extensive.” Call it Arkansan generosity.

One of Act 1413’s more draconian provisions throws out an entire page of voters’ signatures on a petition if one signature is a voter from a different county.

“Determining whether a Petitioner has signed the correct petition is not always obvious. Many cities cross county boundaries,” the booklet sympathizes, noting that such honest mistakes happen “frequently with voters whose homes are near a county border.”

And will now be used against you.

The main thing the booklet advises? Hire a lawyer:

“If the reader has questions concerning Act 1413 of 2013 . . . the reader should contact his or her own attorney for a legal opinion as to specific facts.”

Should only citizens with their “own” attorney be able to participate?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Rocky Mountain Facts

Norma Anderson is one of the politician-plaintiffs challenging Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights in federal court. The former Republican state senator claims the citizen-enacted measure, requiring a vote of the people to raise taxes, is unconstitutional. Why? It violates the legislature’s divine right to raise taxes without having to bother to obtain voter approval.

“We should eliminate the initiative to change the constitution,” she wrote in the bimonthly magazine of the Colorado Municipal League, “but continue the process for the statutes.”

Then, only the legislature would have the power to propose amendments — or, I should say, not propose amendments — like term limits or tax-and-spending limits.

Plus, legislators can repeal any statutory initiative they don’t like. That happened with campaign finance reform.

Anderson complains that Colorado’s “constitution has been amended repeatedly by initiative” and that all those amendments “have made it the wordiest and longest in the nation.”

True?

No. Colorado doesn’t have the longest state constitution. Or the second longest. Or third or fourth or the fifth longest. Colorado’s ranks seventh in word count.

Moreover, the campaign finance measure noted above accounts for nearly 10 percent of the constitution’s verbiage.

Besides, most of the amendments to Colorado’s constitution have come from legislators, not through citizen-initiated petitions. Since voter initiatives began, roughly two-thirds, 63 percent, have come from the legislature.

Forget the facts, though, Anderson and her fellow politicians have had enough of popular government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption term limits

The Natural State of Politicians

Republicans took over both chambers of the Arkansas Legislature, last November, and now have control for the first time since Reconstruction — that’s the century before the century before this century.

Not long after their installation ceremony, the Republican majority — apparently eager to make new reforms — introduced Senate Bill 821, creating a new state program to regulate people circulating initiative petitions. Arkansas activists, the Advance Arkansas Institute and Citizens in Charge were effective in getting legislators to dramatically pare back and remove several harmful and unconstitutional provisions of SB 821, but the legislation designed “to make the referendum process prohibitively difficult in Arkansas,” still passed.

Even more underhanded was passage of House Joint Resolution 1009, “The Arkansas Elected Officials Ethics, Transparency and Financial Reform Act of 2014.” It’s a doozy:

  • With claims of preventing legislators from giving themselves a pay raise, the measure actually removes the current constitutional requirement that voters approve any pay increase and creates a commission of citizens (appointed by legislators and other politicians) to give those same politicians a pay raise.
  • While claiming to enact a gift ban and other ethics reforms, the measure actually provides, Arkansas Times’ Max Brantley wrote, “constitutional protection extended to special interest banquets and travel junkets for legislators.”
  • Completely unannounced by the title, the measure also changes the state’s term limits by allowing legislators to hang around for 16 years in the House or the Senate.

Still, I look on the bright side. The people of Arkansas, having meet their new boss, will petition and vote and sue to protect their rights.

Plus, yesterday, the legislature adjourned. It’s safe again in Arkansas.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall

Railroading Vancouver

Vancouver, Washington, Mayor Tim Leavitt enthusiastically supports a bridge project that would carry light rail trains from Portland, Oregon, into his town. “There is no more important opportunity for our city and our region than completion of the Columbia River Crossing,” he intones.

Transportation activist Margaret Tweet is more cautious. “Precious little discussion is held on the true transportation needs of our region by the government agencies that propose costly solutions,” she writes.

Back in 1995, Clark County — which includes the city of Vancouver — held a vote on a measure to fund the extension of Portland’s light rail to Vancouver. It was defeated. As if fearing repetition of this, today’s city “leaders” chose not to risk a similar negative vote. According to them, they alone should decide this expensive, controversial public works project.

So a group of citizens led by Larry Patella filed an initiative petition to gain a vote to forbid the city from spending any money to facilitate the Columbia River Crossing project. But their petition fell 32 signatures short of qualifying.

Then it was discovered that 606 people had signed the petition more than once. By state law, the county threw all the duplicates out.

So, seventy-five plaintiffs, including 44 folks who mistakenly signed the petition twice, sued to have their signatures count . . . just once. And last week a judge overturned the rule on duplicate signatures.

Is the initiative a go? Maybe not. Vancouver City Attorney Ted Gathe has issued a legal opinion saying the citizen-initiated ordinance is outside the power and scope of the initiative process. The city council seems poised to use the attorney’s opinion as an excuse to again block a vote of the people they serve.

Allegedly serve.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Know Your Rights

Last year, Angela McCaskill, the Chief Diversity Officer at Gallaudet University, was placed on leave from her job for simply signing a petition.

That was a violation of her rights, plain and simple.

Well, someone in Wisconsin just lost his job for signing a petition. But there is a difference.

On Tuesday, Circuit Judge Tom Wolfgram in Ozaukee County, Wisconsin, was defeated by a better than 20 point margin in his bid for re-election. Never before had Wolfgram, a three-term, eighteen-year incumbent, even faced opposition.

But then he signed the petition to recall Governor Scott Walker.

The petition successfully triggered a recall election, but proved unsuccessful in removing Gov. Walker.

But because petition signatories are a matter of public record, Wisconsinites (and the known universe) discovered that Judge Wolfgram had signed that petition to put a recall of the governor on the ballot.

The petition, or at least Wolfgram’s signature on it, triggered Wolfgram’s opponent, attorney Joe Voiland, to launch a campaign for the judicial post by attacking Wolfgram for lack of impartiality . . . for signing the Walker Recall.

Some argue that those calling to put a measure on the ballot must do so fully under the public lens. Others fear retribution to signers, equating the signing of a petition with the casting of a vote.

I fall into the latter camp. While opponents must have the access necessary to make any reasonable challenge to the validity of the signatures, that can be accomplished without allowing full public disclosure of all the personal data of those who have signed.

However, as in this case, once the public has the information, repercussions at the ballot box can hardly be prevented.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability initiative, referendum, and recall national politics & policies

Time to Wait

“You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste,” said Rahm Emanuel in the aftermath of the mortgage/financial/intervention-induced crisis of 2008. “It’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid.”

The “important things” most politicians want to do usually involve more government controls. Post-crisis, they hurry to expand the state’s power over us before crisis-bred emotions like panic and anger can fade.

In doing so, they often blindly ignore relevant facts that even a little time for discussion would bring to light. That’s why Glenn Reynolds argues for a “Waiting period for laws, not guns” in a recent USA Today column.

Efforts to push legislation through while emotions are high mean that the legislation doesn’t get the kind of scrutiny that legislation is supposed to get. Laws are dangerous instruments, too, and legislators seem highly prone to sudden fits of hysteria.

Even New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg now says we must “start thinking a little bit more about the implications of things before we rush to legislate.” That’s “a bit rich” for Reynolds, since Bloomberg had PR men on standby to exploit the latest mass shooting as quickly as possible.

Still, if even Bloomberg is okay with hitting the pause button, “maybe the next time politicians want to rush a bill through without sufficient deliberation, others will have the fortitude to slow things down, read the bill and inform the public.”

This is not a pie-in-the-sky proposal. In many cities and states, today, an informed public can even petition a hastily enacted law onto the ballot for a referendum, at least when legislators don’t slap on a phony “emergency clause” to speed their worst enactments past the people.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall

Running the Asylum

After an election in Idaho wherein legislators saw three of their laws rejected by citizen-initiated referendums, Senate Bill 1108 passed the senate and headed its way to the House. It would impose draconian new requirements to qualify a referendum or citizen initiative.

“There’s a perception that this relates to Props 1, 2 and 3,” explained the bill’s author, Sen. Curtis McKenzie (R-Nampa). “This doesn’t have anything to do with that.”

Voters in Maryland approved the three legislative enactments petitioned to statewide referendum votes last November. But why risk a veto from the people, eh? Legislation has been introduced to dramatically increase signature requirements, restrict pay for petition circulators, and block websites from providing online help to those wishing to sign referendum petitions.

Sadly, the federal government’s executive branch seems no fonder of citizen input than do state legislators. The White House petition website recently hiked the signature requirement up four-fold to get an official response — from 25,000 people to 100,000 folks.

“Raising the threshold so steeply and so suddenly,” Rachael Larimore wrote in Slate, “sends the message that maybe the White House doesn’t really want to be bothered with the problems of the people.”

Obviously, the White Houses isn’t alone among political power centers in opposing citizen involvement. To keep track of assaults on the initiative, referendum and recall, please consult Citizens in Charge’s 2013 Legislative Tracker.

I’ll keep it updated; you keep your local “representatives” checked.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.