Category: initiative, referendum, and recall

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

People With Influence?

Late summer primaries, then September primaries — before you know it, November’s election is here. ’Tis the season when politicians really need us — at least our votes.

But do they respect our vote? That means keeping their word. It also means supporting ballot initiative rights, so that voters have the last word.

Today, Citizens in Charge and U.S. Term Limits are running two television campaigns to focus attention on respecting the vote of the people for term limits and respecting the right of citizens to petition their government by voting on issues directly.

One spot tells about Oklahoma State Senator Randy Brogdon, who authored two amendments that will appear on this November’s ballot: State Question 747 would term-limit statewide offices and State Question 750 would make it easier for grassroots groups to put measures like term limits on the ballot.

In Missouri, our television ad calls out State Rep. Mike Parson for not respecting the people of Missouri’s 74 percent vote for term limits. Parson voted to gut the limits. Nor does Parson respect initiative rights. He introduced legislation to hamstring citizens in ways already ruled unconstitutional in other states.

Why don’t more elected officials have Dan Maes’s attitude? Maes is a Colorado businessman seeking the Republican nomination for governor. At a business forum, he stood up for citizen initiative rights, saying, “I really want people to have influence in their government.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Pensacola Tea Party

The Boston Tea Party wasn’t about tea. It wasn’t even about high taxes.

“The Boston Tea Party happened during a time of very low taxes,” explains Eric O’Keefe on the Heritage Foundation blog, “and the tea in the harbor had the lowest price of any tea from Britain for years.… But the patriots viewed their local control of government and taxes as an essential anchor for their liberty, so they rebelled at a violation of a basic principle.”

The Tea Party — the American Revolution — was about government. Self-government.

The same issue has surfaced in Pensacola, Florida, where ten citizens are circulating a petition there to challenge a “design-build” contract the City Council approved in May to develop a park and build a stadium.

The Pensacola News Journal headline reads: “Petition drive won’t stop park, CMPA attorney says.” The CMPA is the Community Maritime Park Associates. Their attorney, Ed Fleming, says “Even if they did collect enough signatures and it does get approved by voters, the park has passed a point of approval that it is going to be built now.”

Hmmm?

One of the petitioners, former City Councilman Jack Nobles, said, “I would hope they would re-evaluate their positions based on the wishes of the public.”

It’s not about a stadium or a park construction process. Or tea or taxes. It’s about self-government, about keeping citizens in charge.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


Categories
ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall

E-Power to the People

Disagreement is simply an inescapable part of living with one another. But we should all agree on one thing: The people are sovereign.

The practical question is, how is that sovereignty best instituted? Our experience with those organization and rules we’ve come to rely upon is that, too often, they work against our interests, even working mightily to limit our sovereignty.

Earlier this week, the Utah Supreme Court ruled that electronic signatures should be counted in a case involving an independent candidate for governor who was required by law to gather 1,000 official voter affirmations on a petition.

Of immediate concern is whether the same standard on e-signatures should apply to initiative petitions, which in Utah are required to number over 100,000. Utahns for Ethical Government is asking the AG to count electronic signatures on their measure.

There are certainly issues as to how best to authenticate e-signatures. But can there be any doubt as to the desirability of making it easier for voters to sign petitions and place issues they deem important before their fellow sovereign citizens?

There’s entrenched political opposition to that, though. Utah Governor Gary Herbert says “electronic signatures are part of the future” — but he hopes that’s the far distant future. He wants the legislature to weigh in. Which it may do, working around the judgment of the State Supreme Court.

Will popular sovereignty make it to the Internet, today’s dominant interactivity realm?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Dank der Direct Democracy

For the last week, I’ve had the arduous duty of traveling across beautiful Switzerland, studying their very robust system of voter initiative and referendum. An important issue came up: is so-called “direct democracy” good or bad for business, for economic growth?

Years ago, a Swiss professor suggested that allowing voters a direct say “will ruin the Swiss economy.” (Sound familiar?) But a 2002 analysis by a Swiss business group, Economiesuisse, found that the facts showed otherwise.

Swiss cantons (states) with greater initiative and referendum rights had on average 15 percent greater GDP than those with lesser processes. Municipalities that required budgets to be approved by voter referendum spent 10 percent less per head. Also, public services cost noticeably less in cities and towns with voter initiative rights.

St. Gallen economist Gebhard Kirchgässer put it plainly, “In economic terms, everything is in favor of direct democracy — nothing against.”

But what about in America, where we hear so much about ballot initiatives “ruining” California?

Well, the recent American Legislative Exchange Council report “Rich States, Poor States” found a similar pattern. ALEC ranked all 50 states on a combined measure of their last ten years of economic performance and various factors of “economic outlook.” The top seven spots (and 12 of the top 15) were all held by states that enjoy voter initiative rights.

Ranked 46th, California was the only initiative state in the bottom five states. But even the Golden State’s low rank belongs to the legislature, not voters.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall political challengers term limits

Competition in Michigan

Michigan’s career politicians are pushing to more than double maximum tenure in the state house and almost double it in the state senate.

Michigan currently caps service at three two-year terms, or six years, in the house and two four-year terms, or eight years, in the senate. Thus the “combined limit” on both chambers is 14 years. The new law would allow lawmakers to serve up to 14 years in a single legislative seat. This of course would drastically weaken term limits and severely crimp electoral competition.

Now, term limits help make possible such refreshing political campaigns as that of Leon Drolet, director of the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance and a former state representative. He is vying for Michigan’s 11th state senate seat, now open because the incumbent is prevented by term limits from standing for re-election. Another former state representative as well as a current one are also running for the seat.

I bet that when one of these challengers gets elected — and certainly if it’s Drolet, with his strong anti-tax, anti-pork message — incumbents will keep moaning about the loss of “experience” wrought by term limits.

But Drolet has experience, too — fighting governmental assaults on the liberties of citizens. His co-authoring of a constitutional amendment to curb government’s power to grab private homes through eminent domain is relevant.

It’s just that ample experience in helping restrain government power isn’t the kind that certain politicians applaud.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders

A Representative

Missouri State Senator Jim Lembke is a hero . . . just for listening.

Senator Lembke helped protect his state’s initiative and referendum process by defeating legislation passed by the House with several restrictive provisions, some already ruled unconstitutional in other states. One provision aims to restrict citizens from petitioning for more than one initiative at a time, which would effectively block eminent domain reformers working on two separate measures.

That same unconstitutional legislation just passed the House again. And again, citizens need the help of Lembke and the Senate.

But the senator has also introduced Bill 818, which would do three simple things. First, it protects voters from having their petition signatures discounted for minor technical errors. Second, it makes it unlawful to purposely mislead signers or to harass or intimidate those signing or circulating a petition. Third, it provides judicial deadlines so that opponents could no longer challenge an initiative’s ballot title and hold it up in court so long that the time to gather signatures is exhausted.

On Monday, a Columbia, Missouri, radio station interviewed Sen. Lembke. The host asked him why he introduced his bill. He said people had talked to him about their experiences with the petition process, and he listened.

Sounds simple, really. More legislators should try it.

We at Citizens in Charge Foundation gave Lembke the April 2010 Lilburne Award. We hope it encourages Lembke and his colleagues to continue to fight for initiative rights.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall Tenth Amendment federalism

Wayward States?

While Washington, DC, steps in to take over responsibility for determining just how much and what kind of medical insurance we should buy, the states march, instead, towards personal responsibility, defending a right to self-medication.

More than a dozen states have enacted medical marijuana laws, in defiance of Congress and Executive Branch nannies.

Now, California’s initiative to legalize recreational use of marijuana, or cannabis, has garnered enough signatures to qualify for November’s ballot. Oregon has a measure in the works, too, as do other, less bellwether-worthy states. You can follow the story as it develops on Ballotpedia.org.

California, the state most addicted to politicians (having the highest citizen-to-representative ratio in the union) also has one of the union’s most severely messed-up budgets. Barring cuts, the state needs money. Legalizing and taxing Americans’ favorite weed might help out, some advocates think. No wonder the initiative is popularly known as the “Tax Cannabis Act.”

We’ve heard this story before. The Great Depression allowed the repeal of the 18th Amendment. The Progressive Era’s crowning achievement in social control, the prohibition of alcohol, was seen by the world as weird, and by those who admired the original Constitution of the United States as rubbing against the grain of American liberty.

But it wasn’t freedom advocates who ended Prohibition. It was the separate states seeking revenue from selling booze.

Ah, politics. Nasty when going wrong. Messy when going right.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

The One-Man Petition Drive

Hurray for John Smelser!

After five months of unfailing footwork, in late February, the 67-year-old celebrated his 5,500th signature for a petition to limit the terms of council members in Menifee, California. That’s over 2,000 more than the 3,382 he needed to qualify the measure for the ballot. But he didn’t rest on his laurels. He kept working right up until the March 12 deadline, submitting nearly 6,000 signatures.

Smelser believes every elected official’s tenure in office should be limited. If his term limit measure passes in November, Menifee council members would be able to serve only two four-year terms consecutively. They would be able to run for office again after two years out of office. Smelser believes it’ll pass with an 80 percent majority.

He may be right. He’s certainly taken the pulse of the town on this issue.

Incumbent Menifee Mayor Wallace Edgerton insists that regular elections are all you need to bring new blood into government. But he admits that Smelser has a point: Two terms should be enough to achieve what you ran for office to achieve.

Smelser’s one-man show is obviously not a feat you could replicate in Los Angeles or New York City. But it’s still pretty impressive. It shows not only the dedication and conviction of Mr. Smelser, but also the enthusiasm for term limits of so many voters.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

The Willamantic Refuseniks

Thirty-five years ago, the people of Willimantic, Connecticut, confirmed my belief in the value of citizen initiative rights. And they did it without using the initiative!

In 1974, Willimantic citizens rejected the city budget three times in a row, finally compelling a 9 percent tax cut. Willimantic had been hard hit by a recession. Property taxes were high, per capita income low. The town’s biggest employer, the American Thread Company, had just laid off a lot of people. (A decade later, the company would leave the area.) The citizenry was in a rebellious mood. They demanded budget and tax cuts.

They didn’t do it via citizen initiative. Willimantic was following an old town meeting model of governance, under which any citizen who shows up can vote on the city budget. And they did.

Most places aren’t run on this model. But it has distinct similarities to citizen initiatives, whereby voters can directly curb taxes and spending. Which is why politicians attack initiative rights where citizens have them, and try to stop citizens from gaining initiative rights where they don’t yet have them.

You and me, working together, we have to do something about this. We must protect and use a process whereby the people can make laws the politicians must obey.

Fittingly, I first read about Willimantic in economist Murray Rothbard’s introduction to Étienne de La Boétie’s classic essay on “The Politics of Obedience,” usually translated as The Discourse on Voluntary Servitude.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall tax policy Tenth Amendment federalism

We Told You So

Say it with me: We told you so.

Over the years, I’ve tried to help citizens regain control over their prodigal representatives. Sometimes I got called a radical for these activities. An extremist. But I think of myself as a moderate, as someone promoting moderation.

In government spending, for example.

Among the most moderate of these many statewide initiatives have been what are sometimes called the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, or TABOR, initiatives. These proposals are designed to limit spending increases to a formula of population growth-plus-inflation.

Sometimes we succeeded. Too often we failed.

The consequence of our failures, of each defeat at the hands and promotional budgets of groups that called us, of all people, extremists?

Now, state after state has become what Reason magazine dubs “Failed States.” They did what politicians demanded, spent at rates far greater than moderation would allow. And now that we’ve hit hard times, and state revenues have drastically fallen, how the politicians whine! Indeed, they demand bailouts.

Say it with me, you who’ve voted for TABOR in the past: “We told you so. Lacking our measures, the states have become part of the out-of-control federal deficits and ballooning debt.”

And remember, you who opposed our moderate measures to limit state spending: You are the radicals. You are the ones who helped set our country on its current, self-destructive course.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.