Tag: paul jacob

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initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

The Perfect Couple

Paul Jacob, Rome, term limits, inititative, ballot

A marriage made in . . . democracy? 

Last Thursday, at the 2018 Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy, held at the Palazzo Senatorio in Rome, Italy, I talked about term limits. And initiative and referendum rights.

Italy’s populist Five Star Movement, the leading party in the new ruling coalition, supports both expanding direct citizen-initiated democracy and the idea of limiting politicians to no more than two terms in office. So, imagine my enthusiasm on a morning panel of Italian academics, public officials, and practitioners of initiative and referendum.

I urged them to marry the two issues — term limits and direct democracy. Together, they counter-balance the clear conflict of interest elected officials have with doing the will of the people.

“The citizens are ready,” offered Flavia Marzano, Rome’s City Minister for Citizens Participation, referring to direct democracy. “Maybe so far, politicians are not so ready.” 

She added, “We should merit the trust of the citizens.”

That afternoon, in keeping with the forum’s focus on cities, I delivered a short note on how after Nashville, Tennessee, voters passed term limits in 1994, the Metro Council has peppered the ballot with re-votes in 1996, 1998, 2002, 2015 and now again this November.

Thankfully, what seems like a novel idea in the political world was just common sense at the Global Forum. Here they recognize that, all over the world, people want to be free from tyranny. And all over the world, voters see term limits as an important way to prevent fiefdoms of incumbency, political stagnation and entrenchment, even dictatorship. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Accountability general freedom government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders national politics & policies political challengers term limits

The Other Maine Thing

ranked choice voting, democracy, initiative, referendum, election, voting, Paul Jacob, voting reform, Maine

Tuesday’s biggest election news was the victory for Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) in Maine. This is the second statewide vote for this reform, which allows voters to rank the candidates by first choice, second choice and so on.*

Voters first passed it in 2016, but the next year the voters’ “representatives” in the legislature repealed the law, overturning their vote.

Undeterred, RCV supporters filed a referendum and again went out and gathered enough petition signatures to refer the legislature’s repeal to a vote of the people. On Tuesday, Maine’s voters vetoed the legislature, keeping Ranked Choice Voting.

Initiative and referendum sure are helpful.

RCV is not partisan; it requires the winner to have some level of support from a majority of voters and fixes the wasted vote problem. In Maine, however, the Republican Party opposed. On election day, Republican Gov. Paul LePage even threatened not to do his duty and certify the results.

“Paul Jacobs (Vice chair of the [FairVote] Board) whom I once knew and thought was a good American,” a Republican friend posted on my Facebook page, “has helped unleash the hounds of Hell” . . . adding that “now the voters are so confused by the terrible procedure that voting will be a nightmare this Tuesday!”

Yet voters used the new voting system for the first time Tuesday in candidate primaries before deciding Question 1 on their ballot — about keeping RCV. As one Portland voter put it, “It’s pretty easy to do, despite the negative publicity.”

We need more control over government with our vote. And when voters speak, politicians should listen.

It wouldn’t hurt political activists to listen, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* I’ve discussed the idea in this space many times — there’s more information on how it works here.

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Accountability ballot access general freedom government transparency ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption local leaders national politics & policies property rights Regulating Protest responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

The Great Faction

great fiction, government, citizen, initiative, term limits, Paul Jacob

Politics isn’t a pretty business.

Frédéric Bastiat called the beast it serves “that great fiction” not because it doesn’t exist — intrusive state power sure persists — but rather because what it promises cannot really happen: “everyone living at the expense of everyone else.”

What can we do? How do we counteract a game that is rigged to increase the insanity, not reduce it?

Last week I indicated one thing a minor party with that goal in mind could do: use its power of spoiling elections to change major party behavior, and thus give citizens a fighting chance to restrain governmental metastasis.

Cancer.

I also suggested “blackmailing” the major parties into setting up a system of voting that . . . ends the power to blackmail! I believe that system — ranked choice voting — holds many positives, not the least of which is ending strategic voting, wherein voters are tempted to “falsify” their own preferences and support candidates they might dislike. This is as corrupting to the citizenry as the Great Fiction itself.

Let’s hope a savvy minor party leverages the major parties, gaining reforms to improve the system. Regardless, we can all — independently — push two other limits on political power:

  1. term limits at all levels, and
  2. initiative and referendum rights in all the states, not just the 26 that have it now.

Initiative and referendum rights would give ordinary citizens the leverage to possibly restrain the mad rush to live at each others’ expense. With the initiative, citizens can gain term limits, which produce more competitive legislative elections and lead to fewer legislators captured by the interests loitering in the capitol.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability incumbents insider corruption moral hazard national politics & policies term limits too much government

Most Hated

John Tyler, Trump, hated, leverage, elites, Ted Cruz, Paul Jacob, despised, term limits, unpopular

I was once “the most hated man in Washington.”* Why? For my work on term limits.

I wore the appellation as a badge of honor.

Last year I noted that Ted Cruz had taken up the mantle, but now, certainly, it’s President Donald Trump’s.

Has ever a president been as hated?

Thomas Jefferson was characterized as the Antichrist. Andrew Jackson made many enemies in overthrowing the Second National Bank. But John Tyler is the most interesting case.

President Tyler was a Jeffersonian democrat who took up the office from William Henry Harrison, who died several weeks after being sworn in. Tyler was never accepted as legitimate by — get this — the Whig Party that nominated him. He was dubbed “His Accidency.” After opposing a revival of the national bank notion, there were riots, and his party expelled him. He received hundreds of death threats in the mail. Later he was almost impeached.

Admittedly, Republicans haven’t abandoned Trump — yet. But the Democrats have opposed him from the beginning. And the Entertainment Industrial Complex never ceases to wage a culture war against him. What should the most hated man do?

Make the most of it.

One of his promises was to put congressional term limits into the Constitution. Congress is reluctant. But Trump can do what I couldn’t: use all the powers of the presidency — from the bully pulpit to the veto pen — to leverage those in Congress into proposing a constitutional amendment.

It won’t make President Trump any less hated in Washington, but will win support everywhere else.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* That was in days of yore, the 1990s, and it was Bob Novak who gave me the appellation. Politicians, lobbyists and other government insiders hate term limits.

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Accountability term limits

Trump’s Trump

Term Limits, Paul Jacob, Donald Trump

President-Elect Donald J. Trump wasn’t my choice. Yet, as with any president of these United States, I say: work with him when he’s doing right.

And Mr. Trump is doing right by pushing Congress to vote on term limits.

Every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week, month and year for many decades — going as far back as public polling goes — Americans have firmly and overwhelmingly supported term limits. According to a 2016 Rasmussen poll, 74 percent favor term limits for Congress, with only 13 percent opposed.

The support unites us: 77 percent of Republicans, 67 percent of Democrats and 79 percent of independents together want to limit Congress.

Don’t believe polls? How about election results?

Years ago, syndicated columnist George Will remarked, “To the question ‘Where most recently have term limits passed?’ the answer is: ‘Wherever most recently people were permitted to vote on them.” That remains the case.*

Still, the Washington Post’s Amber Phillips predicted in “The Fix” column that, “Trump’s term limits proposal won’t happen.” Why? Simple, she explained, “Congress doesn’t want it.”

Not to mention that sending the term limits amendment just introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) to the states for ratification requires a supermajority two-thirds vote of both the House and Senate.

Nonetheless, a clean up-or-down vote on a single term limits amendment puts every member of Congress on record. And Mr. Trump is certainly capable of using the bully pulpit of the presidency — and brash enough to remind voters — should their congressman vote against term limits.

It could be Trump’s trump card come 2018.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Support for term limits even brings Mr. Trump and outgoing President Obama together. “I think we want to see new voices and new ideas emerge,” Obama declared after the election. “That’s part of the reason why I think term limits are a really useful thing.”

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Term Limits, Paul Jacob, Donald Trump

 

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crime and punishment general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies Regulating Protest responsibility The Draft too much government U.S. Constitution

For Genderless Freedom

draft, register, registration, woman, Paul Jacob, resistance,

When President Obama announced last week that he wants my daughter to register for the draft — as a symbol of the nation’s commitment to gender equality and a “ritual of adulthood” — believe me, I noticed.

Sure, the symbolism rings hollow, I wrote at Townhall. The president is on his way out and Congress just agreed on a defense authorization bill blocking any Christmas-time sign-up of women by the festive folks at Selective Service.

Still, President O’s symbolism is all wrong.

Free societies don’t require the involuntary service of men and/or women for their defense, much less celebrate conscription as a secular rite. Our All-Volunteer Force is the most effective military in the world. Its leaders neither need nor desire to swell its ranks with draftees — even if, heaven forbid, a major war bubbles forth from all the foreign conflicts and interventions in which we’re currently engaged.

As for the “it’s just registration” argument, and promises by politicians that they don’t support a draft. Well, it’s registration for the draft. Per politicians’ promises, I rest my case.

Yet, this comment at Townhall called me back into service: “Has this author been against draft registration for the last 30+ years or is it just because his little princess might have to register? If men have to do it, so should women.”

With slight edits, I replied: “I oppose the draft on principle . . .  As Daniel Webster pointed out, government has no constitutional authorization to conscript citizens. The draft further violates the 13th Amendment. Conscription has been the hallmark of dictators and totalitarian regimes, not America. We’ve had a draft rarely in our history.

“In 1980, I refused to register for the draft when Jimmy Carter brought it back. Candidate Ronald Reagan said, ‘The draft or draft registration destroys the very values that our society is committed to defending,’ and pledged to end registration as president. But Reagan reversed himself and prosecuted 13 of us who had spoken out against the policy and refused to register. I served six months in a Federal Correctional Institution (without being corrected) — the longest of anyone post-Vietnam.

“Here are the reasons I resisted at the time (1985) and a more recent reflection (2010).

“My daughter will make her own decision, and I’ll be supportive. But it is a terrible policy that will diminish our military defense, while also violating . . . ‘the very values our society is committed to defending.’

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Today, Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2016, marks the 32rd anniversary of my arrest by the FBI for violating the Military Selective Service Act by refusing to sign a draft registration form.

 

Additional Information

Common Sense: Needless List

Townhall: Draft the Congress and Leave My Kid Alone (2003)

Townhall: Americans Gung-Ho to Draft Congress (2004)

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draft, register, registration, woman, Paul Jacob, resistance,