Category: initiative, referendum, and recall

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ballot access incumbents initiative, referendum, and recall

Getting to Ballot in Illinois

My business is citizen initiatives. So I notice when courts — at the behest of corrupt politicians like hyper-​incumbent Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan — block a popular initiative to limit the power of corrupt politicians.

Politicians like, say, Mike Madigan.

The initiative would have forced state lawmakers to step down after eight years in the legislature. Although the petition to post the question earned way more than enough valid signatures, a judge kicked the question off the ballot. Then an appeals court refused to reverse; and, finally, the state supreme court let a ballot deadline pass without reviewing the case. All this obstructionism was rationalized by a derelict misreading of the state constitution and motivated by a desire to preserve and protect Illinois’s political class, which is as bankrupt morally as the state is fiscally.

Another attempt at ballot-​blocking proved less successful. It seems that “private detectives” (or maybe just thugs) hired by somebody in Illinois’s GOP establishment tried to intimidate signatories of petitions to get the Libertarian candidate for governor on the ballot. These visibly-​armed creeps pushed signers to disavow their signatures in hopes of keeping the LP candidate off the ballot. So far it hasn’t worked, and the Illinois Libertarian Party has filed criminal complaints in the matter.

From these cases I conclude that things are pretty rotten with respect to the state of representative government in the state of Illinois.

Thankfully, voters there want a change. They just have to keep pushing for it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

Legislators, Tramps and Thieves

In the closing days of Arkansas’s 2013 legislative session, solons of the Natural State surreptitiously voted to put a measure on the state ballot, without fanfare or ballyhoo.

Five months later, the Arkansas Democrat-​Gazette finally noticed what happened, and published an editorial, “Outrage of the Year.’ It has just been reprinted. The outrage hasn’t changed. The measure would extend time in office “for state representatives from 6 to 16 years and for state senators from 8 to 16 years.”

But what an Arkansan will read on the ballot seems a tad different: “An Amendment Regulating Contributions to Candidates for State or Local Office, Barring Gifts From Lobbyists to Certain State Officials, Providing for Setting Salaries of Certain State Officials, and Setting Term Limits for Members of the General Assembly.”

“Setting” term limits? No sir. Term limits, already set by voters, would be drastically weakened.

But the good people of Arkansas are beginning to hear the good news, the truth, thanks to the campaign being waged by Arkansas Term Limits against what will be “Issue 3” on the ballot.

The group is led by Bob Porto and my brother, Tim Jacob, who are traveling the state speaking to audiences. Not surprisingly, the people are shocked and angered upon hearing the manifest fraud their representatives are perpetrating.

At a recent talk, Jacob called it “an attempt to deceive the voters,” noting “they have done it on purpose.”

Yet another argument for strict term limits … and fully informed voters.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Six Flags Over California

Though the Democrats who run the failed state of California insist that Governor Jerry Brown is leading them to a new era of prosperity, the results are mixed at best. The state is riddled with public employee pension problems, environmental over-​regulation, and high taxes, to list just a few.

The problem? The whole system of representative democracy is skewed to insiders. The ratio of voters to representatives is way too high — twice as high as the next nearest state.

The best thing California has going for it is the right of citizen initiative. Typically, it (and the voters) get blamed for the unwillingness of their “representatives” to stay within their means.

Enter Timothy Draper, Founder and Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a billionaire Silicon Valley professional. He has been promoting an initiative to split California into six smaller states: provisionally dubbed Jefferson (northern counties that have a long history of separatist unrest), Silicon Valley (which could become the richest per capita state in the union), North California (a coastal region from San Francisco south to Monterey County), Central California (a big expanse of many interior counties), West California (four west coast counties including Los Angeles), and South California (five counties including San Diego). Draper insists that his idea is the “something structural, something fresh” that the state needs to prevent further decline.

The initiative has received enough petition signatures to qualify for a 2016 ballot.

But is it a waste of time? Even if Californians vote for it in great numbers, the U.S. Constitution requires a formal request from the state legislature. And the California Assembly is not likely to cede so much power.

Which would provide another valuable lesson about how anti-​Californian California’s leaders are.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

Empowering Abuse of Power

Have a yen to cling indefinitely to political power? You probably oppose term limits … as well as the citizen initiative rights enabling voters to term-​limit you.

And when voters possess both initiative rights and a willingness to exercise them, it wouldn’t surprise me if you pray that any judge assessing a duly petitioned-​for term limits question deems it unconstitutional. Even if it’s garnered 596,140 signatures, 300,000 more than the minimum valid signatures required.

You guessed it: Not a hypothetical scenario. And not, of course, about you.

GOP gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner is leading to impose eight-​year term limits on all legislative service in Illinois. The petition has more than enough valid signatures to reach the ballot. But incumbents sued, citing an early 1990s decision by the Illinois Supreme Court that declared a different term limits question unconstitutional.

Cook County Judge Mary Mikva agrees; “precedent dictates a very narrow provision for allowing the voters to directly enact term amendments to the Illinois Constitution.” Her June 27 ruling is being appealed.

The state’s notoriously corrupt political class may wish upon a constellation, but wishing won’t make the cited precedent relevant.

As Jacob Huebert, senior attorney at the Liberty Justice Center, argued in a recent op-​ed, “term limits are exactly the type of provision the Constitution’s framers thought citizens should be allowed to propose and vote on.” He added, “This isn’t just a common-​sense reading of what the Illinois Constitution says; it’s also what its framers said explicitly when they included this provision.”

The stated aim of republican constitutions in America has never been to protect incumbents from effective citizen oversight and control.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

A Clever Change

Time, gentleman, please!

North Dakota legislators had introduced HCR 3034 and passed it at the pleadings of Secretary of State Al Jaeger. The old-​timer had argued his office needed more time: time to review petitions, time to accommodate legal challenges to ballot measures.

Democracy can be such a fast-​moving target, er, process, you know.

HCR 3034 became Measure 1, a constitutional amendment to change one thing: the length of time citizens had to circulate petitions. It moved the deadline for signature turn-​in from 90 days prior to an election to 120 days prior, thereby cutting 30 days from the citizens and giving it to the Secretary of State, who assured everybody that his extra time would “safeguard the credibility of the petition process.”

The measure passed two weeks ago, in part because it was conducted in a low-​turnout primary election.

Most times politicians avoid citizen input altogether, in their fight against initiative. But in this case, politicians nudged citizens into sacrificing their own advantages to make it easier for the insider class.

It’s admittedly not catastrophic. Worse anti-​initiative measures have passed elsewhere.

But could there have been a telltale sign of the malign intent here, not seen by the voters? Nixing those 30 days did at least one crucial thing: it disallowed signature gathering at the biggest and most popular event in the state: the state fair.

Could it be that it was not “time” at issue, but timing?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

P.S. You can follow initiative and ballot access news at Citizens in Charge.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

Nashville’s Trojan Horse

Beware of politicians bearing gifts.

The titans on the Metro Nashville Charter Revision Commission voted, last week, to recommend that a charter amendment be placed on the ballot, weakening term limits for the Metro Council and reducing representation on it.

“Taken together,” reports The Tennessean, “the proposed changes could throw the 2015 council elections into upheaval by eliminating one of every three seats while offering new political life to more than half of the current council.”Nashville Metro Council

The amendment now goes to the council, needing 27 of 40 members to vote yes. Almost that many are term-​limited next year, so the measure may go on the ballot as early as August.

A former Metro law director on the Charter Revision Commission argued there shouldn’t be any term limits at all, but Councilwoman Emily Evans, the amendment’s sponsor, admitted to reporters that reducing the size of the council was likely the only way to get voters to agree to a weakening of term limits. She noted, “You have to give the public something.”

While voters tend to favor reducing legislative bodies, perhaps to save on costs and unnecessary drama, the other direction makes more sense: smaller districts, where each citizen is more important to his or her representative and that representative can accumulate less power.

A 2005 attempt to cut the size of the council was blocked by strong public opposition, so that may not be the sweetener the politicians think.

As for term limits, voters passed them in 1994 and have three times blocked council attempts to weaken or kill the limits.

Nashville voters know a Trojan Horse when they see it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.