Category: initiative, referendum, and recall

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initiative, referendum, and recall judiciary term limits

A Second Life for Limits

Congress, age limit, voters, democracy

Will the Supreme Court let states impose limits on the representatives and senators they send to Washington, D.C.?

Thanks to events in North Dakota, there’s a good chance this question is about to asked again. 

And get a different answer.

The first time was thirty years ago. The case: U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton.

In May 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court held, in a 5-4 decision, that states cannot impose restrictions like term limits on their congressional delegations.

But: “Nothing in the Constitution deprives the people of each State of the power to prescribe eligibility requirements for the candidates who seek to represent them in Congress,” observed Justice Clarence Thomas in his dissent. “And where the Constitution is silent, it raises no bar to action by the States or the people.”

Now 61 percent of North Dakota voters have passed a ballot measure to impose an age limit on their congressmen. The 1995 Supreme Court would have ruled it unconstitutional. The only justice serving on the high court then who is still there is Thomas.

Everybody thinks that North Dakota’s outlawing of ancient candidates will be challenged in court. In a June 17 podcast for U.S. Term Limits, its president, Philip Blumel, says that USTL would welcome such a challenge.

“Surely, U.S. Term Limits versus Thornton would be the basis” for the challenge and would thus “provide an opportunity for the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit the issue.”

Moreover, a case brought in federal court won’t necessarily take years to decide, because “sometimes the [Supreme Court] expedites election-related cases.”

Fingers crossed, everybody.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

NOTE: Paul Jacob is a former president of U.S. Term Limits and continues to serve on its board of directors. Paul is currently the president of Liberty Initiative Fund, which made significant contributions to North Dakota’s age limits initiative.

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initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders nannyism regulation

Discrimination, California-Style

California, racism, discrimination, government, corruption

How far will a California lawmaker go to try reverse a validly enacted and also very good citizen initiative?

In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative, which prohibits the state government from imposing race-based, ethnicity-based, or sex-based preferences.

Prop 209 added a section to the California Constitution stating that the government “shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”

In 2020, friends of racial discrimination tried to revive racial preferences through a referendum. But voters shot it down, even though proponents outspent opponents 14 to one.

Now California Assemblyman Corey Jackson wants to revive racial preferences another way. His bill, ACA7, would not touch the language of Proposition 209. But it would empower the governor to make exceptions. What exceptions? Any he wishes, as long as he spews the right rationalizations when he does so.

Law professor Gail Heriot, who has launched a change.org petition to oppose the measure, says that “ACA7’s proponents are hoping that voters will be fooled into thinking that it is just a small exception. In fact, it gives the governor enormous power to nullify Proposition 209.”

ACA7 has passed the House and now goes to the state senate, awaiting the magic of legislative action. Heriot says Californians should let their senators know where they stand on the bill. I don’t disagree.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment initiative, referendum, and recall international affairs

Sikh Freedom First

Sikh Soldiers, unity, God

If I get gunned down in a hail of bullets . . . well . . . who done it?

The genocidal Chinese Communist Party, furious at my new website, StoptheChinazis.org? 

Perhaps. But what about the regime of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India? 

I’m a member of the Punjab Referendum Commission, an international group advising and monitoring the non-governmental referendums being organized among the worldwide Sikh diaspora by U.S.-based Sikhs for Justice. Recently, I stood at the entrance of a Sikh temple in Surrey, British Columbia, outside Vancouver, where Canadian intelligence agencies say agents of Modi’s government assassinated Sikh leader and Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar, back in June, spraying him with 30 bullets. 

Then, last week, U.S. prosecutors indicted an Indian national for, according to The Wall Street Journal, “working with an Indian government officer to pay a purported hitman $100,000 . . . to murder a prominent advocate” on U.S. soil.

“The court filing did not name the victim,” The Washington Post reported, “but senior Biden administration officials say the target was Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, general counsel for the New York-based Sikhs for Justice. . . .”

My mouth’s suddenly a bit dry; I’ve been on the same stage as Mr. Pannun several times. 

There’s a long history of political unrest and violence between Sikhs in the Punjab region and the central Indian government . . . leading today to roughly one-fourth of Sikhs living outside of India. 

What can we do? Well, though I take no position on whether — YES or NO — the Punjab region should secede from India, I very much like that Sikhs for Justice is resorting to the opposite of violence — democracy — by asking Sikhs around the world to cast their vote.

If they dare.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders

Democratic Notion for Gotion

Ji Jinping, battery plant, protest, Michigan

One problem with American politics? Far too many decisions get made by the federal government. 

Not only is the Washington Leviathan removed geographically from most citizens, it’s also completely devoid of the direct democratic checks available to voters in most American cities and roughly half of U.S. states: initiative, referendum, and recall. 

At the state and local level, we can often respond directly to unpopular government actions with a ballot measure or a recall campaign. And these local efforts can at times impact our national government —  even international policies. 

That’s what happened last Tuesday in Green Township in Mecosta County, Michigan, when voters recalled their entire township board — sending all five remaining board members packing after a sixth member had already resigned.

Back in April, spurred on by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s cheerleading, Michigan lawmakers approved $175 million in “taxpayer incentives” [read: subsidies] to help Gotion Inc. “build a $2.4 billion electric vehicle battery plant.”

Public uproar was not merely over the subsidy but also because the company’s parent company, Gotion High Tech, is based in China.

“We don’t want it here. It’s dangerous. We’re zoned agricultural, and they’re trying to re-zone our property,” said resident Lori Brock. “There’s nothing that’s been truthful about this.”

When it became clear that, in addition to state legislators not listening, local officials showed more interest in making a deal than being transparent with citizens, Brock filed a petition to recall the board.

And the rest is hist . . . well, not so fast. Township officials continue to say the deal is done. To which Brock pledges, “We’re moving forward with lawsuits against Gotion.” 

Because voters were able to express themselves, there is hope.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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initiative, referendum, and recall tax policy

Preparation HH Hornswoggle

Colorado, tax

Tonight, I’ll be anxious for election returns from Colorado on Proposition HH, a measure Democrats in the legislature placed on the ballot to both lower taxes and raise revenue. 

Huh?

Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist wrote recently in The Denver Gazette, that the proposition “would result in the largest tax hike in Colorado history.”

Yet, the ballot title begins: “SHALL THE STATE REDUCE PROPERTY TAXES FOR HOMES AND BUSINESSES, INCLUDING EXPANDING PROPERTY TAX RELIEF FOR SENIORS . . . ?”

“Democrats have advertised Prop. HH primarily as a property tax cut that will save homeowners hundreds of dollars per year,” explains Colorado Public Radio’s Andrew Kenney, “which is true.”

But Kenney goes on to plainly present the rest of the story, that HH would also “raise the state spending limits created by TABOR, allowing the government to eventually keep hundreds of millions, and then billions, of dollars more tax money each year instead of refunding it.”

TABOR stands for the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, which voters passed by citizen initiative back in 1992. Under TABOR, government spending growth is limited, with excess revenue returned to taxpayers. Prop HH is designed to offer immediately small property tax relief attached to letting the legislature grab much bigger money from not providing refunds in the future.

Norquist correctly dubs it “a bait-and-switch tax hike scheme.”

It’s the usual stock-in-trade of the political class. The difference in Colorado, however, under the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, is that politicians are required to ask voters for permission . . . to hornswoggle them in this way. 

Politicians have been asking for higher taxes again and again for years. (Not to mention going to court in a failed attempt to overturn TABOR.)

But voters have the final say. Today.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment election law initiative, referendum, and recall

Methinks the Mayor

petition, private property, taxes, schools

“So, Walmart has no rights?!”

The frustration flowed from Yakima Mayor Janice Deccio to a 911 operator. Her compassionate heart bled profusely for the long-suffering stockholders and executives of one of the world’s richest companies. 

“Hi, this is Mayor Deccio. I know that this isn’t an emergency call, but I need to talk to somebody,” she told the dispatcher. “There are far rightwing petitioners at Walmart and they are not leaving after Walmart has asked them repeatedly to do so. And the police have not taken them off the premises.”

But, as the voice at 911 explained to the distraught officeholder, Washington State law requires that commercial property must make a public accommodation for First Amendment activity such as petitioning. 

The mayor’s thirst for a police solution to these “far rightwing” petitioners went unquenched.

“Obviously, the extreme left is freaked out by these initiatives,” offers Glen Morgan on his We the Governed podcast.

He’s referring to six conservative-oriented initiatives being promoted by Let’s Go Washington and petitioned onto Washington State’s 2024 ballot.

“Four of these initiatives reduce taxes,” Morgan points out. “One of them allows the police to actually chase violent criminals once again. And the other one confirms that parents have the right to know what strangers are doing to their kids at school or in unsupervised medical settings.”

Deccio now claims that mystery constituents told her the petitioners were aggressive and threatening . . . something she didn’t mention that on the call. The fact that her 911 plea has been made public might have something to do with her change of tune.

And don’t even mention ideology! “I don’t care,” she contends, “nor even know what they were petitioning about.”

The mayor added: “No one told the group they couldn’t petition, and it was certainly not my intention to stop them.”

No, of course not — she intended for the police to stop them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall Voting

Sticking It to the People

democracy, representation, Memphis, term limits

Nashville’s Metro Council? I’m no fan. But I do like the people of Nashville.

That’s where I differ from Tennessee’s Republican-dominated state legislature. 

My beef with the Metro Council (discussed in this Wall Street Journal op-ed) is the fact that, after term limits were passed back in 1994, the council has forced voters to say “No” to five different ballot measures referred by the council (1996, 1998, 2002, 2015, 2018) to weaken or abolish their own limits. 

“No” is a tough concept for them to grasp.

One of those failed council-sponsored measures even offered to reduce the size of the council from 40 to 27 in hopes voters might see that provision as positive — “give the public something,” said one pol — to divert from the council’s self-servingly unpopular attack on term limits. 

The GOP-controlled state legislature, on the other hand, is very angry at Nashville’s liberal Democratic politicians for blocking the Republican National Convention from being held next year in Music City. It sure seems a vindictively partisan move, costing people who own Nashville restaurants and hotels a sizeable bit of income.

So, back in March, the Tennessee Legislature passed a new law cutting Nashville’s council from 40 to 20 members.

That’ll teach ’em, eh?

Were only the tender feelings of Nashville’s dishonorable honorables in jeopardy, I wouldn’t complain. But the ratio of us citizens to our elected representatives is critical.

As Citizens Rising head Stephen Erickson aptly put it, “The state government of Tennessee recently decided that the people of Nashville should be less well represented.”

For the moment, thankfully, a three-judge panel in Tennessee has paused the legislature’s anti-representation scheme pending the outcome of a legal challenge. 

But our representatives should be working to improve representation, not hobble it. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

Do Anything

term limits

How far will officeholders go to kill term limits?

Around the country, so-called representatives have repealed state legislative term limits enacted as statutes rather than constitutional amendments; gone to court to get term limits outlawed; and even, in one or two instances, ignored term limits on themselves until forced to step aside by judicial action.

I bet that even if voters enact a term limits law with a provision specifically prohibiting legislators from sending a question to the ballot to weaken or repeal voter-enacted term limits, such a prohibition would not stop lawmakers from proposing just such measures.

Well, it’s time for me to collect on the bet.

In the current legislative session, North Dakota State Representative Jim Kasper submitted a resolution, HCR 3019, to ask North Dakotans to weaken legislative term limits they’d passed just five months ago, last November. Kasper wants a limit of 12 consecutive years in a chamber instead of a lifetime limit of eight years.

What a shocker! He’d like to stay in power longer.

The law voters passed months ago states that the legislature “shall not have authority to propose an amendment to this constitution to alter or repeal” the term limits. This ability is instead “reserved to initiative petition of the people.”

It seems so clear.

Nevertheless, Kasper’s unconstitutional constitutional amendment barreled ahead in the North Dakota legislature until finally expiring in the senate just days ago.

Perhaps the new law should have included something about tarring and feathering lawmakers who try to ignore the ban on acting to undermine their term limits?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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election law general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall

Politicians Revolt Against Voters

Arkansas, citizen's initiative, voting, Democracy

“[C]urrently, in the state of Arkansas, out-of-state special interest groups that come to our state can try to change our laws and change our constitution,” Rep. Kendon Underwood, the Republican sponsor of House Bill 1419, testified “by just getting signatures from 15 counties.”

In the over 100-year history of citizen-initiated ballot measures in Arkansas, no initiative has ever qualified with signatures from only 15 counties. Zero. Moreover, to pass a statutory or constitutional initiative requires much more than merely gathering petition signatures; it mandates a majority vote of the people of Arkansas.

As for “out-of-state” special interests, the ballot issues referred by legislators last election received more such funding than the lone citizen-initiated measure. 

There’s more to unpack. 

“Changing” the state constitution is too easy? Well, HB-1419 hikes up the constitutional requirement that citizen petitions qualify in “at least 15 counties” to now 50 counties out of Arkansas’s 75 counties — a more than 300 percent increase. 

You read that correctly. Mr. Underwood’s proposes to amend the constitution with a simple statute. Textbook unconstitutionality. Yet, that statute has now passed both houses of the legislature and Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders says she will sign it.

In both 2020 and 2022, legislators placed constitutional amendments on the ballot to entice Arkansans to vote away their initiative and referendum power. Both times Natural State voters said no. One of the provisions defeated in 2020 would have increased the number of counties in which petitions must reach a threshold to 45.

After voters rebuffed legislators on those amendments, the politicians now decide to weasel their way around the constitutional restraint. 

My, they’re real politicians now!

Legislators also declared “an emergency” so HB-1419 will immediately go into effect, because there’s an urgent need “to enhance and protect Arkansans’ voice in the ballot initiative and referendum process.” 

Why not tell the Big Lie? They’ve told every other size.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall term limits Voting

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

Citizen Initiatives, term limits, North Dakota

North Dakota state representatives (and I use that term loosely) are unhappy. 

Very unhappy.

They have no use for the Ethics Commission that voters established back in 2018 by passing a constitutional amendment initiated by citizen petition. State legislators reacted by trying to — ahem — “fix” the horse the ethics measure “rode in on.” 

That is, wreck the state’s ballot initiative process, to prevent citizens from making such reforms happen . . . without any “help” from politicians.

Legislators placed a constitutional amendment on the ballot to require that any citizen-initiated amendment be approved not merely by North Dakota voters, but then by both chambers of the state legislature. Their amendment, amid uproar, was finally amended so that if legislators voted the initiative down, voters would get a second vote on it. 

Still, 62 percent of voters said, “No, thanks!”

Then, in 2022, the state Chamber of Commerce and other special interests attempted to use the citizen petition process, which they always say is way too easy. Yet, these insiders failed to gather enough signatures to qualify their measure requiring a 60 percent supermajority to pass an initiative. 

Meanwhile, term limits supporters gathered enough signatures* and, last November, North Dakotans said, “Yes!” 

Seems politicians in Bismarck, the state capital, are even less fond of term limits. They’ve introduced a raft of bills designed to kill the citizen petition process:

  • House Bill 1452 would slap a 90 percent tax on contributions to ballot measures by any American living outside North Dakota. 
  • House Bill 1230 would fine a campaign committee $10,000 and each of committee member $1,000 each if the petitions they turn in fail to have enough valid signatures to qualify the initiative.
  • Senate Concurrent Resolution 4013 would amend the state constitution to (a) require 25 percent more voter signatures, (b) outlaw any payment to signature gatherers (something the U.S. Supreme Court has already unanimously ruled state governments cannot do), (c) block new residents from petitioning in the state for in some cases over a year, and (d) mandate a 67 percent vote to pass a citizen-initiated ballot measure.  

North Dakota legislators prove the case for term limits. And the horse it rode in on: citizen initiative.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Though term limits supporters had to fight the 30-year incumbent Secretary of State’s attempt to block the petition all the way to the state’s highest court, which ruled unanimously to place term limits before the voters.

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