Tag: ballot initiative

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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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Illustration created with PicFinder​.ai

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Shanghaied in Tallahassee

initiative, petition, Florida

How to prevent citizen control of government?

The democracy-​loathing Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is not merely wiping out Hong Kong’s civil liberties, but also aggressively undercutting the limited democratic input citizens previously had. You see, in December of 2019, in the last local elections before the pandemic proscribed the city’s protest movement, fledgling pro-​democracy candidates won an incredible 87 percent of the seats. 

So the Chinazis postponed the next election, just to be safe.*

Never a full-​fledged one-​person/​one-​vote democracy, Hongkongers only voted for 35 of the 70 Legislative Council seats. But now the CCP is increasing legislative seats to 90 while reducing to just 20 those that voters choose.**

While tyranny may seem another growth industry where China outpaces us, don’t count out our politicians just yet.

Last November, Florida voters decided four citizen initiatives, passing two and defeating two others — including one to make it tougher to pass constitutional amendments. Such “direct democracy” isn’t easy — almost 900,000 Sunshine State voters must sign. Then to pass, Florida amendments require a 60-​percent vote.

Yet for the third consecutive session the unfriendly Florida Legislature, dominated by Republicans, wants to make it even more difficult for regular people to communicate, associate, organize and petition an amendment onto the ballot, bypassing the pols:

♦ House Joint Resolution 61 would hike that 60-​percent supermajority for passage to 66.7‑percent. Should a measure that receives 66.5 percent of the vote lose? 

♦ Senate Bill 1890 would outlaw contributions of greater than $3,000 to the petition phase of the campaign, which usually costs upwards of $5 million. It’s campaign finance “reform” specifically designed to silence citizens by blocking their ability to successfully place an issue before fellow voters.

“[I]t should not be an impossible process,” offered Trish Neely with the League of Women Voters …

… of Florida, that is. Not Hong Kong.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Not to mention the police arresting aspiring pro-​democracy candidates.

** The police must now first approve all candidates as being sufficiently pro-​China, as well.

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Photo by Elizabeth Jenkins

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Seeing What’s There

“One can squint and see ballot measures as a kind of super-​survey of the electorate, with much larger samples and actual stakes,” wrote Sasha Issenberg over the weekend in The Washington Post. “The results then can be interpreted as a pure representation of voter preferences on discrete issues, without the vexing overlay of partisan polarization, incumbency, candidate personalities, scandal or gaffes.”*

Which “can be seductive,” he warns in an essay entitled, “Ballot measures don’t tell us anything about what voters really want.”

Nothing? 

Mr. Issenberg is willing to toss out these results because “ballot measure contests operate within a framework so different from elections for public office — with few financial limits”** and “lopsided spending.”

He cites Florida’s Amendment 2, pushing the state’s minimum-​wage up to $15, where the yes-​side spent nearly 10 times as much as the no-​side. And California’s victorious Proposition 22, which he argues “declined to protect gig workers” even though that is exactly what it does, and where supporters also outspent opponents roughly ten to one. 

Issenberg also points to marijuana-​related issues passing while widely outspending opponents. “In New Jersey, where more than two-​thirds of voters said yes to legalization,” he explains, “supporters spent 65 times more than the leading opposition committee …” 

But that only amounts to proponents spending half-​a-​million, which doesn’t go very far in Jersey. 

While Issenberg, the author, journalist, and UCLA political science teacher, acknowledges that “a higher minimum wage and marijuana legalization are broadly popular” and don’t require greater spending, he argues that lopsided “multiples” of spending, like in New Jersey, “are unimaginable in the world of people running for office.” 

Really?

Just try. Numerous candidates for office run without any opposition at all or completely token competition. Take Illinois’s 4th congressional district, where incumbent Democrat Jesús Garcia outspent his Republican challenger by a margin of 704 to one — $593,219 to $843.

Look at the ballot measures decided weeks ago. Don’t squint; put your glasses on, if you need them. And unlike Issenberg, believe your eyes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Initiatives can suffer from the “personalities, scandal or gaffes” of their proponents. Still, there is clearly far less partisanship and no incumbent, per se.

** Actually, ballot measures have no limits at all. The federal courts have ruled that campaign contributions can corrupt candidates receiving them, but since ballot initiatives are written down in black-​and-​white and cannot be changed after the election, financial contributions cannot corrupt a ballot measure. 

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The Rest of the News

Matt Pitsch, Arkansas, initiative, citizen, ballot,

Reid Wilson’s very welcome reporting in The Hill, recently, was headlined, “GOP legislators clamping down on voter initiatives.” 

This disrespect for the people and their basic, democratic check on legislative power is far too common, and something about which people need to know. 

For instance, ballot measures in Florida already must garner a supermajority of 60 percent to win, but politicians are now proposing that threshold be hiked still higher to 67 percent. Not to mention bills to burden petitioners with unconstitutional restrictions.

Though most of the attacks are coming from Republican-​dominated legislatures, the article also made clear that Democratic Party legislators in several liberal states — California, Oregon, Washington — are also trying to “take power away from voters.”

But the article lacked some very pertinent information, allowing politicians to make some terribly misleading charges against direct democracy. 

“In the last seven elections, we’ve actually changed our constitution 20 times,” complains Arkansas State Sen. Mat Pitsch, the sponsor of legislation making petitioning for citizen-​initiated ballot measures more onerous. “We’re averaging three changes every other year. Things that normally are voted on by elected representatives were making their way through constitutional ballot measures.”

Sen. Pitsch thinks legislators should make these decisions, instead of voters. How convenient. 

But the state’s motto is “The People Rule.”

Honest people can disagree about how often state constitutions should be amended, but 20 amendments in 14 years does not make Arkansas one of the more prolific states. Moreover, consider the genesis of those 20 amendments. Only three were citizen-​sponsored measures; the other 17, the vast majority, were placed on the ballot by … legislators! 

A fact the reader should have been told.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Matt Pitsch, Arkansas, initiative, citizen, ballot,

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March Sanity

North Dakota, initiative, citizen initiative, ballot initiative, democracy, suppression

“A public debate on the merits of a measure can reveal its flaws,” the Bismarck Tribune calmly and reasonably editorialized yesterday, “and then we have to trust voters to do the right thing.”

“Why are some legislators so afraid to allow North Dakota voters to decide what is in their constitution?” an earlier Fargo Forum editorial asked. The Forum dubbed one bill — giving the legislature a partial veto on voter-​enacted constitutional amendments — “The Voter Nullification Act.” 

On the voter initiative, North Dakota’s elected representatives are of a much different mind than these newspapers or the people of North Dakota.

The Flickertail State is hardly alone on this. 

Michigan’s legislature made their ballot initiative process more difficult in last December’s lame-​duck session. Arkansas politicians have been stabbing at the initiative with rules and regulations for years, and they’re back at it this session. On a recent trip to the Missouri capitol, I heard elected officials privately argue that voters deciding issues directly — without going through the legislature — was a “bastardization” of our republic. 

Take Idaho’s Senate Bill 1159, which would hike up the signature requirement from 6 to 10 percent of voters, a 67 percent increase, while also reducing by two-​thirds the time allowed for petitioning. The legislation’s stated purpose? “[T]o increase voter involvement.”

“It is odd,” wrote former state Supreme Court Justice Jim Jones in the Idaho State Journal, “that some in the Legislature now wish to drive a stake into the heart of that people-​driven legislative process.”

It’s not really very odd. Legislators routinely put their political self-​interest before the people — especially when it comes to voters having a democratic check on their power. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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North Dakota, initiative, citizen initiative, ballot initiative, democracy, suppression

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Advice & Conceit

Tim Eyman, democracy, initiative

The core idea behind the institutions of representative government — state legislatures, city councils, Congress — is that lawmakers, sometimes called “representatives,” endeavor to implement “the will of the people.”

To do so … necessarily entails knowing the public’s preferences.

Hmmm. How to find out what people want? Or don’t?

A ballot initiative sponsored by Tim Eyman and Voters Want More Choices offered one method, mandating advisory votes for Washington State’s electorate to approve or disapprove the last 19 tax increases passed by legislators.

These advisory tax questions sometimes garnered more votes than races for superintendent of public instruction and the state supreme court. Results? Mixed. Seven times voters favored the legislators’ tax hikes, while opposing the other 12. 

Either way, good info for legislators to know, no? 

No … apparently. Conceited Washington state politicians don’t want to know what voters think. The core idea behind Senate Bill 5224 is stopping voters from officially expressing their will on taxes by getting rid of these pesky advisory votes.

In testimony last week, Tim Eyman reminded legislators that voters have four times mandated advisory votes on tax increases (2007, 2010, 2012, 2015); have six times voted to require a two-​thirds legislative majority to raise taxes, only to have those measures overturned in court; and that legislators have prevented citizens from using the state’s referendum process by attaching phony emergency clauses to tax hikes.

“Give the peasants a couple of crumbs,” Eyman beseeched, “and let them at least express an opinion at the ballot box.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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Tim Eyman, democracy, initiative

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