Tag: initiative

Democratic Dreams

US, United States, national referendum, initiative, voting, democracy, elections,

On Wednesday, I said we should, to borrow the vernacular, “have a conversation” about a national referendum.

Billionaire investor, environmentalist, and Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer proposed the idea, which I’ve loved conceptually since my friend, former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel (also a Democratic presidential candidate), first advocated it decades ago.

But that ol’ devil — he’s in the details. (Decidedly not the latest lingo.) What might a national initiative and/or referendum process look like?

Given that it would require a constitutional amendment — meaning ratification by 38 of the 50 states — the process must win broad support to be enacted.

Here’s what I propose: Allow any statutory initiative measure to be petitioned onto a federal General Election ballot with signatures equaling 6 or 8 percent of the country’s population* and as verified by election officials in each state. Require a concurrent majority, whereby for a measure to pass it must garner not only a majority of the vote nationally, but also a majority vote in at least 20 states — or even in a majority of the states.

An initiative proposing a national constitutional amendment should do more. Require, say, a petition signature threshold of 10 or 15 percent and not merely a majority of the vote nationally to pass, but mirroring the current amendment process, mandate a majority in each of at least 38 states.

If U.S. Term Limits is successful in getting 34 states to call a convention to propose an amendment for congressional term limits, a national referendum process could follow in those footsteps.

Talk about two ideas that will pop blood vessels in the heads of professional politicians and their special interest cronies!

Dare to dream.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* This should simply follow the figures of the most recent census, of course.

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initiative, referendum, and recall

Swampy Moves

Florida, Governor, Ron DeSantis, initiative, referendum,

Late Friday, in the closing hours of Florida’s legislative session, an amendment “was thrown onto the lifeboat of a different, unrelated bill in a last-ditch effort,” reported the Miami Herald, “to limit citizen-driven ballot initiatives.”

With poisonous provisions appended, House Bill 5 rushed through both chambers in mere hours with party-line GOP support. It’s now headed to the desk of Republican Governor Ron DeSantis ® for a signature.

Or, better yet, a veto.

The legislation forbids campaigns from paying more to petition circulators who work harder and gather more voter signatures. Years ago, California Governor Jerry Brown vetoed an identically ridiculous and mean-spirited prohibition passed by that state’s Democratic-dominated legislature, writing: “It doesn’t seem very practical to me to create a system that makes productivity goals a crime.”

Surely, Gov. DeSantis is as adverse to government regulations and red-tape as was Governor Moonbeam.

HB 5 also mandates that a bold statement be placed on the ballot next to any measure estimated to have “increased costs, decreased revenues, a negative impact on the state or local economy, or an indeterminate impact for any of these areas.” Wait … if this information is so important to voters, why only inform them when the message is “negative” or “indeterminate,” but not when positive?

The sneaky maneuver “goes to show,” Florida Conservation Voters Director Aliki Moncrief noted, “how little respect [legislators] have for Florida voters.” The leader of one ballot measure effort called it the “ultimate of swampy moves.”

Ask Gov. DeSantis to defend the voters by vetoing HB 5 — call (850) 488‑7146 or email him.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall

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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Tags Arkansas, ballot, ballot initiative, citizen, citizen's initiative, initiative, Matt Pitsch

ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall

Holding All the Trumps

Idaho, initiative, ballot, Senate Bill 1159, democracy, voting,

Last week, Idaho’s Senate Bill 1159 — “the bill to make it much harder to qualify a voter initiative or referendum for the Idaho ballot,” as the Idaho Press summarized it — passed the Senate on the narrowest 18 – 17 vote.

Now headed to the House, the legislation would

nearly double the number of voter-signed petitions to place an initiative onto the ballot
reduce the time to gather those signatures by a whopping two-thirds
throw up numerous additional hurdles

What’s the point?

The state already has one of the most arduous petition processes in the nation for qualifying a citizen initiative for the ballot. Moreover, without passing any new law, Idaho legislators currently have and have always had a 100 percent veto on any citizen-initiated measure enacted by voters.

Idahoans cannot place constitutional amendments on the ballot through their citizen initiative, only statutes. And any statute voters pass can then immediately be repealed by a simple majority of legislators. Or amended any which way those solons so desire.

So, again, why the need for politicians to pull up the ladders?

Senate Republicans claim — in a news release headlined, “Setting the record straight on initiative bill” — to be “concerned about the integrity, transparency and fairness of the initiative process.”

What does heightening all the hurdles to trip up citizens have to do with integrity, transparency or fairness?*

Voting on an issue is “unfair” to whom … legislators?

Holding all the trump cards, Idaho senators still didn’t want the people to have a say. The politicians are scared to death of democracy.

Which is why we need more, not less.

Certainly not none.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* I do acknowledge that the bill is transparently awful.

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Accountability ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall

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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initiative, referendum, and recall

Advice & Conceit

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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