Category: initiative, referendum, and recall

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Voters Ruin Everything

William Endicott, former deputy managing editor of The Sacramento Bee, thinks the problem with California legislators is their “Let the people decide” attitude. In a recent op-ed, Mr. Endicott argued that the initiative process allows politicians to shirk their responsibilities, to let decisions be made by voters at the ballot box.

It’s an awfully convoluted notion: to make legislators actually do their jobs, citizens must back away and give those known to shirk their responsibilities a monopoly on legislative power.

Funny, in Congress and in the 26 states where voters lack the initiative, politicians happen to be shirking their responsibilities like it’s going out of style. There’s just not as much voters can do about it.

But Endicott’s argument doesn’t really concern legislators at all. It is about the voters of California, who have (to paraphrase him) ruined everything.

He writes: “Outcomes too often have been decided not by reasoned debate but by emotional appeals, mind-numbing and misleading television commercials and direct mail, all of which do more to confuse than to enlighten.”

So Endicott looks for legislators to “crack down on signature gatherers” and “make it more difficult to qualify a measure.”

In other words, democracy was swell, but that new-fangled TV is too much for gullible voters. Let’s hit the kill switch on direct democracy and put all our hope in our brainy, courageous legislators.

In other words, Californians: Shut up and pay your taxes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Punishing Productivity

California Governor Jerry Brown just vetoed Senate Bill 168, writing, “It doesn’t seem very practical to me to create a system that makes productivity goals a crime.”

Senate Bill 168 makes it illegal to pay someone circulating an issue petition based either directly or indirectly on the number of signatures gathered. In fact, had Brown signed SB 168 into law, you’d get thrown in jail for awarding a prize, say a campaign t-shirt, to the volunteer who gathers the most signatures.

Petition campaigns like productivity. They don’t want folks locked up for it.

Could undercutting productivity and doubling the cost of petitioning be the real goal of SB 168?

Perhaps outlawing incentives isn’t intended to slow the pace and super-size the cost of a petition drive. But it does. Californians have only 150 days to gather hundreds of thousands of voter signatures, so a slowdown and added cost means issues blocked from reaching the voters.

In a Sacramento Bee op-ed, Sen. Ellen Corbett, SB 168’s author, addressed concerns about diminished democracy, writing, “[I]n states that have enacted a similar law there has been no change in the number of initiatives qualifying for the ballot.”

But a review of those states shows a change — for the worse. Oregon saw a roughly 50 percent reduction in initiatives. In Montana and North and South Dakota the number of citizen measures dropped. After passage of productivity bans in Nebraska and Wyoming, neither state’s voters have seen another initiative on their ballot.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Creating a New Crime

California is wild and crazy, fruity and nutty. Not in Hollywood, but in Sacramento.

The state’s enormous prison population — so large that the Feds recently ordered California to release overcrowded prisoners — feeds an otherwise expensive prison system, straining the state’s strapped budget.

So what did Golden State solons go and do?

They created a new crime.

Almost. Senate Bill 168 has passed both houses of the state’s General Assembly and sits on Governor Jerry Brown’s desk.

The bill would make it “a misdemeanor for a person to pay or to receive money or any other thing of value based on the number of signatures obtained on a state or local initiative, referendum, or recall petition. . . .”

The penalties are up to a year in jail or a $25,000 fine or both.

What is the compelling reason to criminalize paying people for being productive and gathering more signatures, rather than less?

Fraud. Or so supporters say.

But instances of fraud on initiative petitions in California have dropped a whopping 78 percent over the last decade. Moreover, there’s no evidence that paying people on the number of signatures they gather induces fraud.

The Sacramento Bee urged Governor Brown to veto SB-168 and prevent it from “raising the cost of qualifying measures, freezing out less wealthy groups, and making direct democracy more of a captive of well-heeled interest groups.”

If you live in California, call the Governor’s office at (916) 445-2841 and respectfully ask him to veto SB 168.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders

Two Initiatives, With Initiative

Josh Sutinen is 17. He can’t vote yet. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t having an effect on the politics of his hometown of Longview, Washington.

After his father’s second valiant if unsuccessful attempt to get into the Evergreen State’s House of Representatives, Josh became fascinated with political change. Conveniently, an issue soon darkened his town: Red light cameras.

Josh organized an initiative campaign to remove the red light cameras. Indeed, visitors to the family business, Sutinen Consulting, will sometimes find Josh manning the front desk — and then bringing another employee up from the back room (where they fix computers and do other technical things beyond my understanding) while he fields calls from major newspapers around the state, even around the country.

The campaign has been difficult; the powers that be in Longview (“The Planned City”) fought back. First they balked at giving the collected signatures to the county, to be counted. Then they even sued the petitioners — Josh Sutinen and Mike Wallin — to prevent the initiative from appearing on the ballot.

So the petitioners are fighting back. Josh is now preparing to gather signatures for an Initiative 2, which would prevent the city from suing citizens who draw up initiatives that challenge city policies.

Joining Josh is initiative guru Tim Eyman. Eyman has worked against red light cameras up north, and is enthusiastic about Longview’s second initiative as well, saying it is “exceptionally good policy and something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.”

I’ll keep you posted.

This is CommonSense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall political challengers

Another Protected Incumbent

It’s an impasse worthy of Joseph Heller. The author of the comic novel Catch-22 provided us with the perfect term for a specific type of trap. In Heller’s story, you could only get out of the army if you were crazy — but if you asked to get out, that was proof of your sanity. Catch-22!

In Washington State, citizens may recall an elected official, but the recall effort must do two things: Prove to a court that the effort is not frivolous and abide by the state’s campaign finance laws.

Trouble is, for the court hearing you need an attorney. If your effort — like the current effort to recall controversial Pierce County Assessor-Treasurer Dale Washam — is popular enough to get pro bono work from a major law firm, too bad.

Bad? Well, the campaign finance regulation applies to attorneys, too — and, according to some bureaucrats, the campaign finance limit of $800 per person limits not merely citizen contributors, but volunteering lawyers as well. They may not contribute more than $800 worth of labor to the client!

So, a recall is technically possible. But practically, it is not.

Another typical pro-incumbency effect of campaign finance regulation.

In this case, the Institute for Justice has come to the rescue. They’ve sued: Farris et al. v. Seabrook et al. IJ has made it a mission to defend Americans thwarted by misguided campaign finance regulation.

Someone has to fight our Catch-22’s.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Who Should Steer the Bus?

Metropolitan mass transit systems run buses and light rail trains. There’s not much evidence they do it well.

But boy, do they know how to spend money!

Now that the economy has hit the skids, tax revenues are down and metro boards across the country are hurting for money. King County, in Washington State, is no exception. The Metro system there has a multimillion dollar shortfall in funds, and the board threatens to cut services by 17 percent unless more revenue gets raised.

The Metro board suggests a tax hike — what they call a “congestion tax” — on cars.

Tim Eyman, the Evergreen State’s number one tax-hike watchdog, argues that the voters should get to decide whether to increase taxes to fund existing levels of bus service.

Great idea. Consent of the governed and all.

It’s amusing to read accounts of the debate over the proposed tax. Once again, we hear stories of bus after bus running without being anywhere near full.

If metro buses were my business, I’d want to make sure it ran in the black.

But with government, alas — relying on taxes for continuous bailout — that’s not even within the bounds of polite discussion.

And while it might make sense to run some buses on a fixed, reliable schedule, other buses could be supplied to commuters “as needed.” With modern technology this is eminently doable.

But first, let citizens decide how much money they really want to throw at the system.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall

What’s Next, Democracy?

Not all votes are democratic, for — as Stalin pointed out — it’s not who votes that counts, but who counts the votes.

Same for “town halls” and public discussions: Politicians regularly hold meetings with constituents the main point of which is to make sure that nothing too challenging gets aired.

This being the case, you might guess my reservations about “deliberative polling” in the “What’s Next California” vein.

This weekend three hundred “randomly selected” Californians gathered in Torrance to undergo what looks to be a three-part process:

  1. Submit to polling on the major issues facing the crisis-ridden state.
  2. Gather to discuss the issues, with fact-sheets in hand, and lecturers to listen to and answer questions.
  3. Submit to polling at the end of the session, to see how many of the participants’ ideas have changed.

Project founder James Fishkin is obviously interested in the initiative process, but just as obviously interested in seeing it lean more towards a “progressive” direction. Of the three opinions on the program featured at Zócalo Public Square, I lean towards Tim Cavanaugh’s: “By combining polling with top-down instruction from a panel of ‘experts,’ deliberative pollsters hope to determine how voting would change if voters’ opinions could be forced into compliance with establishmentarian thinking. . . .”

Athenian-style public deliberation? Not really. The experts aren’t polled, so it’s obvious that they aren’t expected to modify their opinions.

Besides, in a real democracy, the people would do their own research and bring along their own experts.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall

A Really Bad Sign

I’m traveling across California this week to raise awareness about a diaper load of legislation designed to restrict, thwart, inhibit, hamper, obstruct, impede, block and tackle California’s robust system of initiative and referendum.

Politicians know they cannot abolish voter initiatives outright. They’d need voter approval. Instead, they seek to rig the rules so that people are nonetheless prevented from exercising their rights.

At CitizensinCharge.org we’ve detailed the various legislative proposals, with one bill really standing out amidst the general stench: Senate Bill 448. Authored by State Senator Mark DeSaulnier, the bill has already passed the Senate and is pending in the State Assembly.

Sign of the Times

SB 448 would force any citizen gathering petitions to put an issue onto the ballot to wear a badge — really a small sign, with lettering the size I’m wearing in this picture. If the citizen petitions as a volunteer, the sign must read “VOLUNTEER SIGNATURE GATHERER”; if one is paid, then “PAID SIGNATURE GATHERER.”

The sign must also contain the California county in which one is registered, or read: “NOT REGISTERED TO VOTE.”

DeSaulnier touts his legislation as simply providing “a little transparency.” But for those in power to force citizens to wear a message that politicians dictate suggests that they think of petitioning government as a permitted privilege rather than an inalienable right.

Though it’s easy to bring up ugly historical parallels, that doesn’t make Sen. DeSaulnier and those supporting this bill redcoats or Nazis.

But they are petty, mean and unconstitutional.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Post-script: You can email Sen. DeSaulnier at: senator.desaulnier@sen.ca.gov

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall too much government

Eleven Fiftieths

Eleven states have “bottle bills,” legislation requiring vendors to collect a deposit on each container they sell of soda pop, iced tea, energy drinks, etc. It basically mimics the old, voluntary system of recycling, where bottling companies would pay people to return glass bottles, for reuse.

When I was a kid, cheaper materials (aluminum, plastic) made the old system uneconomical. So environmentalists pushed through legislation in Oregon, and then elsewhere, to create government-mandated recycling systems.

Oregon’s legislature just passed a “sweeping revision” of the bill, upping the deposit amount from five cents to ten and expanding the program. John Charles of the Cascade Policy Institute testified at a legislative hearing against the revision. According to Charles, bottle deposit recycling conflicts with curbside recycling, which Charles argues is far more efficient — or at least easier to use than lugging containers back to return centers, which are usually sticky, smelly, and. . . .

Well, Charles didn’t talk about the stink. One of my Washington State informers did.

You see, Washington not only lacks a bottle bill, such efforts fail with larger percentages each time one hits the state’s ballot. But the beverage containers sold in Washington have the same deposit/return guarantees as in Oregon. So some Washingtonians transport their in-state purchases — sans five-cent deposit — across the border for unearned returns.

You might think that fighting such cheating would be of more concern to Oregon lawmakers than making it even more lucrative to out-of-state profiteers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall

A Bad Sign

A Centerville, Virginia, man made news when he agreed to his wife’s demand that he stand at a busy intersection wearing a sign emblazoned “I Cheated: This is My Punishment.” His merciful wife ended the punishment after just a couple hours.

In recent years, a few judges have sporadically sought to shame criminals in similar fashion. Back in 2007, several people convicted of shoplifting opted to avoid a longer jail sentence by donning a sign outside the store they had ripped off, which read, “I Am a Thief, I Stole from Wal-Mart.” But Wal-Mart soon opted out of such spectacle.

Now, the California State Senate has passed new legislation to force folks to wear similar signs. But not for committing any crime.

Unless petitioning one’s government is now criminal.

State Sen. Mark DeSaulnier’s Senate Bill 448 seeks to harass and belittle the citizens who circulate petitions by making each wear a sign “on his or her chest” that reads “PAID SIGNATURE GATHERER” or “VOLUNTEER SIGNATURE GATHERER.” The sign would also inform the public which county the petitioner is registered to vote in, or must say, “NOT REGISTERED TO VOTE.” The lettering must be in at least 30-point type.

Sen. DeSaulnier calls this “transparency.” But transparency isn’t necessary for all petitioning, apparently: SB 448 doesn’t require those collecting signatures to put a state legislator on the ballot to wear such a sign.

It applies only to those who dare use the citizen initiative.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.