Category: initiative, referendum, and recall

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

But Not ‘By’ the People

Our ability to vote directly on the chief issues of our time is a vital political power, a right. I think so, and most Americans agree. 

But for some reason some of those elected to “represent” us don’t.

Last year, Missouri State Rep. Mike Parson introduced legislation to restrict petitioning to place initiatives on the ballot. Parson himself admitted that there might be unconstitutional parts to his bill. Thankfully, it failed. 

Now, this year, he’s back. Parson wants to double the number of petition signatures citizens must gather to place an issue on the ballot. Presently, citizens turn in more than 200,000 signatures to meet the state’s requirement. Parson wants to make that 400,000.

Why? Did voters really elect Mike Parson to block them from having a say-​so in their own government?

In Nebraska, Citizens in Charge is suing to overturn unconstitutional restrictions on the initiative process. Amy Miller with the ACLU, which is handling the case, said, “It’s hard not to see the restrictions as a deliberate effort on the part of legislators to keep independent candidates and grassroots initiatives off the ballot.”

Now Nebraska State Senator Bill Avery has introduced legislation to further increase the signature requirement for a constitutional amendment by 50 percent.

It all makes me realize how important it is to have a process whereby we citizens can overrule our so-​called representatives.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall

Wait a Minaret!

In a national referendum, the Swiss just voted to ban the construction of any new minarets in the country.

Minarets are the onion-​shaped crowned spires of Islamic mosques, from which Muslims are called to prayer five times each day.

At MarginalRevolution​.com, economist Tyler Cowen’s first thought on the Swiss vote was, “Sooner or later an open referendum process will get even a very smart, well-​educated country into trouble.”

Cowen doesn’t elaborate on what he means by “open.” But he does raise an important distinction between freedom and democracy.

I’m a huge fan of voter initiative and referendum, but a bigger fan of freedom of religion. Freedom for the individual must come first — no dictator has a right to deny it. 

Nor does a revolutionary tribunal. 

Neither does the Congress or a state legislature or city council. Or even a solid majority of voters in a referendum.

But Cowen misses something, too. The problem in Switzerland isn’t really their initiative and referendum. Legislators make mistakes, too … as do, of course, authoritarian regimes. We generally have far less to fear from government under such voter control.

In fact, though I deplore this vote, the ability of Swiss citizens to directly check the power of their government has helped make it one of the best places in the world to live. That is, one of the freest.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall tax policy too much government

Legislative Dreamin’

California voters love their state’s process for placing initiatives and referendums on the ballot. 

Legislators? Most take a much dimmer view. This year they’ve been blaming voters for spending the state into bankruptcy through the initiative. Additionally —  and please hold your laughter — they claim that initiatives have tied the hands of legislators who would otherwise have better managed the state’s finances.

Enter Bob Stern of the Center for Governmental Studies. At a recent public hearing of the Senate and Assembly Select Committees on Improving State Government, Stern told legislators, “Most of the ballot-​box budgeting has come from you.”

Stern was referring to a Center study that looked at all ballot measures over the last 20 years that required additional spending. Stern found that three out of four measures costing money were put on the ballot by legislators, not through the citizen initiative. He also found that the legislature’s own ballot measures cost the state $10 billion, while citizen initiatives cost only $2 billion.

Of course, an even bigger issue is the wild spending spree by California politicians with no ballot box input from voters at all. While state tax revenues have increased a whopping 167 percent over the last two decades, government spending shot up 181 percent.

Voters aren’t perfect, but anyone with a lick of common sense knows the answer to controlling government spending isn’t to free the politicians from voter restraint.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall

Petition Rights and Wrongs

Quite a theory: No law is unfair if only that law is being followed.

According to an election board attorney in Howard County, Maryland, tossing 80 percent of the signatures on a voters’ petition does not add up to a “right-​to-​vote case” at all. Gerald Richman says the board merely “[carried] out the dictates of the law.” He denies that “fundamental fairness is an issue.”

The proposed referendum aimed to stop a rezoning in Howard Country permitting the building of larger grocery stores. I’m skeptical of zoning as an instrument to protect citizens and their property, so if I resided in Howard County, I would not likely vote Yes. 

But as things stand now, I also would not be allowed to vote No.

Two months after the election board okayed the first batch of signatures, the board turned on a dime and began massively nullifying signatures, essentially killing petition rights unless voters can win them back in court.

Were the tossed signatures deemed fraudulent? No. The only “problem” is trivial variations between how voters signed their names on the petition and how their names are registered. Things like omitting a middle initial. An attorney for the residents notes that under such restrictive requirements, the signatures of Ben Franklin and John Hancock on the Declaration of Independence could not have been counted.

That notion of fairness is one King George would’ve been mad for.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability initiative, referendum, and recall

Ionosphere Laughter

Government is a business — a big business, employing more people than any other. It dominates by regulating, restricting, taxing and subsidizing. 

Government is also “too big to fail,” which is why, increasingly, politicians and public employee union bosses have ascended to the top of the heap of a growing army of competing lesser groups, always asking — no, demanding — more money. 

This growing sector depends not on the decisions of dispersed customers and donors and investors, but on decisions concentrated in Washington, and, to a lesser extent, the state capital … and city hall. 

The federal boys splurge far over their revenues — by the trillions, beyond the Ionosphere — courtesy of foreign creditors and the printing press. Governments at the state and local level tend to be more restrained, existing nearly on the same level as the rest of society, in a sort of Stratosphere (if not Troposphere) of finance. 

Indeed, they are constitutionally forced to balance budgets, can be limited in their power to tax, and are not allowed to print money. Often, they must even ask voters for permission to borrow. 

Add on the initiative and referendum, and we can gain some control over governments closest to home. 

Not so at the federal level, where often the only effective response to government corruption and excess is a sort of recycling program by late-​night comedians. 

This makes our laughter at national politicians a tad bittersweet. Or just bitter.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Darn Right, Guys

Initiative rights are under nonstop assault from the political class.

Fortunately, most voters know the value of being able to end-​run or reverse the bad decisions of lawmakers. And just a few clear-​thinking defenders of initiative rights are enough to expose the murky evasions of the politicians and their pals.

One recent example is a Boston Globe column by Jeff Jacoby entitled “Something stinks, but it isn’t voters.” Jacob details an attack on initiative rights by the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, Ronald George. I’ve already commented on Georgie’s jumbled judgment, but let me quote Jeff’s summary of how such critics think. He observes that these folk simultaneously “believe that citizens are too dumb to judge the merits of legislation — and that such decisions are therefore best left to the lawmakers they apparently weren’t too dumb to elect.”

Lawmakers are especially annoyed by any citizen-​imposed restraint on their ability to tax and spend the electorate into the poorhouse. Like California’s Proposition 13. In another fine column, Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association recalls that at the time, “people were losing their homes to double-​digit annual tax increases.”

Prop 13 gave folks a way to keep what was theirs. Despite the greedy grabbing of the political class. Who’d rather, you know, just have a free hand.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.