Category: initiative, referendum, and recall

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ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall

No Particular Agenda

Agenda-less improvement of Colorado’s constitution is the goal of a “group of Colorado’s top civic leaders, bipartisan in its makeup,” according to the Denver Post. All they want to do is correct constitutional inconsistencies.

The difficulty of getting the revisions is so acute that many of the state’s “top civic leaders” believe that it is time again to press for a constitutional-review commission empowered to send proposed changes to the voters directly, via multi-subject initiatives that can substantially revise, rather than simply amend, the state’s governing charter. (A single-subject rule obtains for hoi-polloi signature-gatherers.)

Must be nigh impossible to get a question on the ballot the way things stand now, eh? But — wait — one of the Civic Leaders pushing for a commission, Bob Tointon, laments that people “are frustrated by the issues that get on the ballot so easily in Colorado.” And Colorado’s Future, the main organization pushing for the commission, has always argued that it’s too darn easy for the mere people to post an initiative.

Which is it? It’s too hard to post a question onto the ballot, or too easy?

Both. It’s too easy for the general public to use the initiative process, but it’s too hard for Civic Leaders to scrub voter-approved initiatives out of existence.

Opponents of this elitist brainstorm worry that the proposed Super-Commission would seek to undermine the state’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR), a popular citizen initiative passed two decades ago limiting government spending and requiring voter approval of new taxes. The fear is legitimate.

The long-standing agenda of this cast of Civic Leaders is no secret: kill TABOR.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall

Better Than a Thousand Boneheads

H.L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan, when they took over the early 20th century journal Smart Set, served it up with a great motto: “One Civilized Reader Is Worth a Thousand Boneheads.” That’s how I feel about my readers. I almost always enjoy the comments section of ThisIsCommonSense.com, and sometimes learn something important.

I especially enjoy it when my readers show they are on the right track, thinking of reforms that exhibit a sense of both justice and savvy use of incentives and disincentives to restrain the political class. Jennifer Gratz suggests “making the hurdle higher for politicians to get on the ballot”:

Tie ballot access for state-wide candidates to the same burden as initiatives. Names only appear on the ballot if they meet the same signature gathering threshold as a state-wide initiative: same requirements, same laws, same restrictions, same burdens.  Win in one state and politicians may stop messing with the I&R process. . . .

Clever.

As I reported this weekend on Townhall.com, Michigan legislators are in “voter suppression” mode again. It’s no surprise, since politicians tend to “have their own, almost personal, reasons to disdain direct democracy. They see citizen action as direct competition. And so their ‘reform’ ideas so far put forth run the usual gamut of insiders’ vexation with ‘outsiders.’” Perhaps the only permanent solution to constraining their lust to restrict citizen input is to constitutionally put them on the same footing as citizens.

What better place than ballot access for statewide offices?

Were party-supported candidates and incumbents all required to get the same number of signatures onto the ballot as initiative measures, the insiders would just have to lower the required number of signatures.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall links

Townhall: Voter Suppression

This weekend’s column at Townhall.com covers the perennial legislative itch to suppress citizen input — this time in Michigan. Go on over, but come back here to check out links to relevant articles:

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initiative, referendum, and recall video

On the Road in South America, Part Three

Last Friday, at the 2012 Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy in Montevideo, Uruguay, Paul interviewed Daniela Bozhinova, a Bulgarian Green Party and direct democracy activist. Daniela spent the better part of a year studying initiative & referendum in the United States as a Fulbright scholar and you might be surprised by what she has to say.

Paul returns from his South American travels today.

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ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall video

Video: On the Road in South America, Part Two

Taking a few moments away from the main events of the Global Conference on Direct Democracy, an interview:

More to come.

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initiative, referendum, and recall video

On the Road in South America, Part One

This week Paul Jacob is traveling down south — way down south. Here he reports from the Lima, Peru, airport, explaining what he’s up to:

If all goes according to plan, he’ll report a few more times while in South America, and after.

You can view this video in HD, here.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall Tenth Amendment federalism U.S. Constitution

Put Federalism In Your Pipe

Though centralized power, coalescing in Washington, D.C., has increased in recent years as a bipartisan effort to grow government, it’s worth noting that true federalism is not dead.

Take one of America’s longest-running atrocities, the “War on Drugs.” The American people are rebelling, leaving their political representatives, state and national, in the back seat. The recently successful marijuana legalization initiatives in Colorado and Washington State are already taking effect, thus marking a major retreat in the once-popular, now increasingly hopeless war.

Last Friday, The Seattle Times reported that King County has dismissed 175 cases involving people over 21 and possession of one ounce of cannabis or less. “Although the effective date of I-502 is not until December 6, there is no point in continuing to seek criminal penalties for conduct that will be legal next month,” explained the county prosecutor.

A smaller number were dismissed in Pierce County, with its prosecutor saying that, “as a practical matter, I don’t think you could sell a simple marijuana case to a jury after this initiative passed.”

In Colorado, a major drug task force has been disbanded. The excuse is lack of funds, but I suspect that Colorado officials had read the writing on the wall, and it wasn’t “Mene, Mene, Tekel, u-Pharsin” — it was the wording of Colorado’s Initiative 64.

The federales don’t have the manpower to enforce federal law in the 50 states, or the constitutional authority to dictate state enforcement of either federal law much less the nature of state criminal laws.

Courtesy of the citizen initiative, we could be seeing the next major devolution of power away from the nation’s capital.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall national politics & policies

Where Reality Sells

A lot of people, Democratic and Republican, have been saying that yesterday’s election was “the most important in our lifetime.” It wasn’t — and wouldn’t have been had the presidential race gone the other way.

But as it is, the outcome was hardly shocking. An incumbent got re-elected. Wow.

The Senate solidified its Democratic position; the House remained solidly Republican. America after Election Day looks almost exactly the same as America before.

So, why so little change?

Blame it on “hope.”

Face it: in electoral politics, fantasy sells. Mainstream politicians love to promote The Dream. Not the American Dream, which is about hard work and honest dealing, but the Changeling Dream, about getting something for nothing. Or getting ahead at others’ expense. At present, this Dream rests upon spending more than government takes in forever and ever, believing that somehow there are no disastrous consequences to the resulting accumulation of debt.

Democratic politicians may be better able to describe their lavish dreams for all that government can do, but Republican office-holders sure seem to hang out on that same street in Dreamland.

Now they’ve just about all been re-elected to go back and hang out for another term.

What can we do? Hope they change their spots?

No. That’s too passive. “Cast your whole vote,” Henry David Thoreau wrote, “not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.”

How? In 2013 and 2014, citizens can petition to put important issues on state and local ballots. We change the terms of political debate; we gain the upper hand — and put common sense back into government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

Unbelievable

There they go again!

You’d think after Nebraskans voted three separate times for eight-year legislative term limits that the state’s legislators would finally accept the vote of the people they claim to serve.

But you’d be wrong.

The limits passed in ’92 and ’94 were struck down in court rulings that re-wrote the state’s initiative petition requirements. Voters responded to that judicial tyranny by booting out a supreme court justice in a retention election for the very first time in state history. A second justice resigned the day after that 1996 spanking by voters.

In 2000, citizens gathered enough signatures to put the limits back on the ballot and again they passed.

But that hasn’t stopped State Sen. Tom Carlson and his fellow legislators from placing Amendment 3 on tomorrow’s ballot. If passed, Amendment 3 would allow Carlson & Co. to stay in office 50 percent longer.

Strange, we limit the president to eight years; George Washington stepped down after two four-year terms to set that example. But somehow eight years isn’t enough time for a state senator.

In a last minute radio ad campaign by a purposely mis-named Nebraskans to Preserve Term Limits, Sen. Carlson says that he and his gang “believe in term limits.” But seconds later Carlson mentions “coaches, teachers, doctors” and suggests, “It is unlikely we would consider limiting their service to eight years.”

Well, he’s right that we don’t limit brain surgeons to eight years. But then again, being a legislator isn’t brain surgery.

As Nebraska voters will remind members of the state’s Unicameral Legislature tomorrow — for a fourth time.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access First Amendment rights general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall

Concerned and Confused

Why call it “political correctness,” when it’s simply “political” and so terribly incorrect?

Whatever we call it — “a totalitarian impulse” comes to my mind — placing Angela McCaskill on administrative leave from her job at Gallaudet University is just flat-out wrong.

“It recently came to my attention that Dr. McCaskill has participated in a legislative initiative that some feel is inappropriate for an individual serving as Chief Diversity Officer,” Gallaudet President T. Alan Hurwitz wrote, last week, on the University’s Facebook page. McCaskill’s alleged transgression was to sign a petition to refer the Legislature’s same-sex marriage law to the ballot for Maryland voters to decide, and potentially overturn.

Hurwitz didn’t mention any specific policy violated by McCaskill. Worse, while acknowledging her “right to sign a petition,” Hurwitz added, as if in clarification, that “many individuals at our university were understandably concerned and confused by her action.”

There appears to be much confusion at Gallaudet . . . about the meaning of freedom.

President Hurwitz, who faces criticism from both proponents and opponents of the same-sex marriage referendum that started this fracas, claimed to be confident that a “resolution of this matter can be reached,” hazarding that it “will require that she and the university community work together to respond to the concerns that have been raised.”

A “resolution”? McCaskill has an attorney, and the greater likelihood is a large lump sum settlement for violating her civil rights.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.