Category: initiative, referendum, and recall

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ballot access Common Sense initiative, referendum, and recall

Solving a Problem

Regular readers know that I’ve had my share of troubles in Oklahoma, where a politically-​motivated Attorney General abused his office years ago to threaten myself and other initiative petitioners. Thankfully, we won that battle.

Now, with a critical election nearly upon us, there’s a different problem in Oklahoma. Put another way, there’s a big opportunity.

On the ballot in just a week is State Question 750, which will make it a little less onerous for citizens to qualify initiative and referendum measures for future ballots.

Of all initiative states in the country, Oklahoma is the most difficult to put an issue on the ballot. The state mandates the highest percentage of signatures in the entire nation, while also setting the second shortest period for folks to circulate petitions, a mere 90 days.

Currently, Oklahoma determines the petition signature requirement by the office with the highest number of votes cast in the last election. This means that after every presidential election the signature requirement shoots up by as much as 40 percent!

Which, in turn, shoves aside the possibility for voters to reform government and hold it accountable.

State Question 750 would, instead, set the petition requirement to match the totals to the votes on gubernatorial elections. This would remove the roller-​coaster fluctuations after each election. More importantly, it would significantly lower the signature requirement — by about 40 percent.

But there is a rather serious problem. SQ 750 is slightly behind in the polls — with a surprisingly large number of voters undecided.

Why?

Well, I’m convinced it’s because the ballot title for SQ 750 is plodding and abstruse, while also offering a negative spin.

Can you guess who wrote it?

The cockamamie title was prepared by none other than Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson. Yes, Edmondson’s the same politician who tried to throw me (and two other innocent activists) in jail on trumped up charges that, later, he was forced to dismiss and expunge.

When AG Edmondson launched his political witch-​hunt against those of us who seek limits on government spending, we fought back. As that battle began, a friend urged me to set out some goals. Here are the five goals I set out three years ago and where we stand on each one:

1. Win our legal case.

  • We won. All charges were dismissed and our indictment expunged from the record.

2. Make Mr. Edmonson a private citizen after the next election.

  • Edmonson was defeated in the Democratic primary back in July.

3. Overturn the state’s residency law.

  • The law was struck down as unconstitutional.

4. Term-​limit all statewide officials — most necessarily the Attorney General. (Edmondson has been AG for the last 16 years.)

  • The term limits amendment, State Question 747, is on this November’s ballot.

5. Open up the initiative and referendum process in Oklahoma.

  • In 2009, we assisted Oklahoma activists in passing three bills through the state legislature to make the petition process more open and accessible. One of those bills is SQ 750, a constitutional amendment, which is on the ballot this November — along with term limits.

Passing SQ 750 cannot help but have some personal meaning for me. More consequential, however, is the impact its passage — or failure — will have on our campaign to protect and expand the initiative process all across this country. We cannot afford to have the strong public support for the initiative hijacked by a convoluted ballot title from a disgraced AG on his way to the political dustbin.

One thing is clear: If Oklahoma voters know what State Question 750 is all about, they will pass it — with a solid majority.

Let’s help inform them. 

A serious statewide radio campaign, reaching the Oklahoma electorate in this final week, costs a very serious $68,000. This is heavy saturation for the last 7 days of the campaign.

The radio spot will help voters cut through the AG’s smokescreen and grasp the significance of a YES vote on SQ 750 by reminding folks that the initiative process makes reforms like term limits possible. You can listen to the radio spot here.

Citizens in Charge has already begun airing this radio advertisement statewide. But we desperately need to run it more frequently and on more stations if we are to reach enough voters.

To do that, we must raise another $14,000 by close of business today — or early tomorrow, at the absolute latest.

Please help at this critical moment. We can purchase an additional spot on a statewide network of stations for $750. A contribution of $100 will cover another 60-​second play on an individual station in Oklahoma City or Tulsa. And in the Sooner State’s smaller markets, your gift of $25 or $50 means another audience will hear us.

Would you consider contributing $750, $250, $100, $50 or $25 of the remaining $14,000 to reach the electorate and win?

You are the freedom fighter that the forces of big, unaccountable government so badly underestimate. Thanks in advance for your consideration. Please contribute online here.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

P.S. This has been a super successful year for Citizens in Charge Foundation & Citizens in Charge, with not a single significant anti-​initiative bill passing in the entire nation and with important victories in court cases brought in Colorado, Missouri, Ohio, Utah and Washington. Now, with your support, we have an opportunity to secure a major win at the ballot box in Oklahoma. Your gift will directly help put citizens in charge in Oklahoma.

P.P.S. Oklahoma doesn’t start early voting until the final weekend before Election Day, so we can still reach all the voters. I have no crystal ball, but I feel this radio ad campaign will make the difference between winning and losing. 

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Trading One Right for Another

Trades are not unheard of in politics, but somehow they rarely exhibit the up-​front honesty and clarity of the trades that make up the bulk of our economic life. When I go to the super-​market, or the record store, or Wal-​Mart, I pretty much know what I’m getting and what I’m giving up.

Not so clear, though, in politics.

Take Arizona’s “Hunting and Fishing Amendment,” Proposition 109 on this November’s ballot. Much has been made of the first element of the ballot’s title, establishing a “constitutional right” to hunt and fish. Outdoorsmen love it.

But a second element gives to the state legislature “Exclusive authority” to regulate hunting and fishing, which may grant regulatory power to various wildlife commissions.

It basically disallows Arizona’s citizens from future influence through the initiative and referendum. That’s what citizens trade away for the first part. Citizens get a “right” to hunt and fish “lawfully,” a right they already have, but give up their current rights to influence what that “lawfully” means, via the ballot.

Prop 109 also declares that hunting and fishing would be the preferred means of controlling wildlife, and it says that “no law shall be enacted” that “unreasonably restricts” hunting and fishing, etc. 

Of course, constitutions can say “no law” all they want. History shows legislatures don’t abide by that prohibition. Neither do courts.

Just read the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and consider … and cringe.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

The Election Addiction Fiction

Poor Willie Brown. Ever since California slapped term limits on state lawmakers, Brown’s lacked a permanent perch in power.

For many, Brown’s 15-​year reign as speaker serves as Exhibit A in the case against unlimited terms. Brown himself bragged that he had been the “Ayatollah” of the assembly — though later he seemed to repent of his support for untrammeled spending in that role. 

He next lathered patronage as mayor of San Francisco. But this was another term-​limited post, so he couldn’t barnacle himself there either.

It still bothers Brown how voters limited tenures. He’s always opposed term limits. And now the papers quote him telling a Republican political club that term limits are a “disaster.… We’ve allowed ourselves to become addicted to elections.” (You guessed it: He disdains citizen initiative rights too.)

Elections, an addiction? Like heroin? Of course, we’re “addicted” to everything these days. Obama says we’re “addicted” to oil (as did Bush). We’d all admit a compulsion to consume food and oxygen.

To learn what weaning ourselves off term limits might be like, check Ballotpedia, which reports that even in this roiling political year, only 19 incumbent state senators out of 1,167 running for re-​election lost their primaries. Less than 40 percent — the exact number is 459 — even faced an opponent. In general elections, incumbent re-​election rates typically exceed 90 percent, even in tough political times.

That’s fine with politicians like Brown, who always crave another fix — of political power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall too much government

Swooning Over Citizen Control?

D. Dowd Muska attacks conservatives and libertarians for so strongly supporting voter initiative and referendum. From the august pages of the Hartford Business Journal, he writes that we’re “hopped up on the false notion that elected officials respond not to voters but the dictates of liberal elites.” It all started, he says, after passage of Proposition 13 in California, back in 1978: “America’s right swooned.”

Well, I plead guilty — for both swooning and then being “hopped up” on citizen access to a path to check their elected know-​it-​alls. Prop 13 not only saved Californians from losing their homes to exploding property taxes, it also touched off a nationwide revolt. Within two years, 43 states passed property tax relief and another 15 states (including California) enacted income tax cuts.

But Muska warns initiatives “have a mixed record.” He points to a number of measures, some initiatives and others placed on the ballot by legislators, which have expanded government spending or regulation.

Talk about astounding revelations! Of course voters aren’t going to always be right. They won’t agree with Muska 100 percent of the time. They won’t even acquiesce to my superior wisdom and vote my way every time.

Still, it seems to me that any decision legitimately the province of our government ought to be open to democratic oversight by citizens. 

Others, like Muska, prefer that voters choose between candidates Tweedledum and Tweedledee — and then to butt out.

Real options work better. For everyone but insiders.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall national politics & policies

The People Are Restless

Scott Rasmussen’s polling company, Rasmussen Reports, asks questions the establishment polling outfits don’t. For one, he breaks down his poll respondents into the “Political Class” and “Mainstream Americans.”

Last month, by Rasmussen’s criteria, 67 percent of people in the “Political Class” said the country is headed in the right direction, while 84 percent of “Mainstream Americans” said the exact opposite. 

On Friday, Rasmussen Reports released polling showing that 71 percent of Americans support requiring a national vote to approve any changes Congress might make in Social Security. When it comes to raising taxes, 61 percent of us want a tax hike approved by Congress to go to a national vote to be approved or rejected by the people, with 33 percent in opposition.

On the issue of a national vote there is again a stark difference of opinion between the Political Class, which opposes a public vote on changes to Social Security (60 percent) or on raising taxes (73 percent), and Mainstream Americans, who support a vote on entitlement changes (78 percent) and tax increases (72 percent).

Rasmussen Reports has also been tracking something even more fundamental: Does our government have the consent of the governed?

The answer in July was that less than a quarter of us feel the government has that consent. This is actually up from February, but I don’t think that changes the big picture: Public opinion is undergoing a revolution. Rasmussen Reports is trying to track it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

Like Zimbabwe

Richard M. Lindstrom signed a petition, but his signature didn’t count.

The analytical chemist for the federal government left off his middle initial. He told the Washington Post, “I dropped my middle initial on my official signature, oh, I don’t know, probably 40 years ago. It’s my signature. It’s acceptable to my bank and everybody else. But not the Board of Elections.”

Welcome to Montgomery County, Maryland. The Old Line State may lack a statewide initiative, but it does have a robust initiative and referendum process at the county level of government. Unfortunately, as many as 80 percent of the signatures for two initiative petitions — one for term limits and another on ambulance fees — were recently invalidated by county officials. In 2008, the Maryland Court of Appeals declared that a person’s signature on a petition must be presented precisely as signed on his or her voter registration form or, alternatively, must include the surname from the registration and one full given name as well as the initials of all other names.

Longtime petition activist Robin Ficker led the term limits drive. But his signature didn’t count either. While he signed “Robin K. Ficker,” his full name is Robin Keith Annesley Ficker. He forgot the initial “A.”

“They are not even letting people have the chance to vote,” Ficker argued as he and others appeal the petition decision. “It’s the antithesis of a democracy. It’s what they would do in, like, Zimbabwe.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.