Archives for March 2013

Maryland’s House Bill 493 is not dead yet asserts Election Law Subcommittee Chairman Jon Cardin (D-Baltimore County), a co-sponsor.  However, the bill is currently mired in his subcommittee with Cardin conceding that the bill needs amendments for “stakeholders” to consider its passage, and that the chances of it moving forward in the 13 days left in the legislative session have “decreased.”

Late last year, the Lucy Burns Institute published a booklet entitled, “Local Ballot Initiatives,” written by Leslie Graves, president of the institute and executive director of the wiki-based website Ballotpedia.org, to educate citizens on how they can use initiatives and referendums to reform their hometown governments.

Through several articles, recollections by activists (including Citizens in Charge President Paul Jacob) and real-world examples, Graves outlines how the petition process works and how it is beneficial to initiating change at the local level.

Idaho legislators, in a bid to backpedal from the thorny problems caused by passage of Senate Bill 1108, with its negative impact on the initiative and referendum petition process, have fast-tracked a new bill, Senate Bill 1191, to correct some of the vague and likely unconstitutional provisions legislators just enacted via passage of SB 1108. 

SB 1191 removes the requirement that each petition form contain only signatures from a single legislative district, opting to restore the past system whereby signatures are organized on separate sheets by county. This would eliminate extraneous paperwork and potential for errors that could lead to signatures being thrown out.

Ohio Governor John Kasich signed into law Senate Bill 47 on Friday, March 22.  The law sets several new restrictions on the initiative and referendum process in the Buckeye State, most notably, adherence to a strict 100-day timetable for collecting petition signatures, whereas previously, upwards of 58 extra days of canvassing were permitted.

“The General Assembly thought it was important that the law needed to be clarified and the governor agreed with them,” said Rob Nichols, a spokesman for Kasich. However, the General Assembly did not completely agree, with Republicans primarily supporting the bill and minority Democrats dissenting unanimously.

SB 821 threatens petition process

Arkansas State Senators will vote today on Senate Bill 821, sponsored by Sen. Keith Ingram of West Memphis, which would place extremely heavy new burdens on Arkansas’s initiative and referendum process.

Also today, the Advance Arkansas Institute has released a paper by Citizens in Charge President Paul Jacob, which outlines the roadblocks SB 821 places on the I&R process in the Natural State, including the creation of an extensive state registration, training and tracking program for paid petition circulators and making it a crime to “relate” pay to productivity.

Jacob noted that “the bill almost seems designed to make it difficult or impossible for citizens to run successful ballot campaigns.”

In a hyper-partisan effort (with only one exception), Ohio’s Republican legislators have passed Senate Bill 47 through both the House and Senate, sending the legislation to make the state’s petition process much more difficult to the desk of Republican Governor John Kasich for his signature, which would make it law.

“The right to referendum is a very important check that people have to push back on abuses of this legislature,” Rep. Kathleen Clyde (D-Kent) argued on the floor. “This bill is a direct attack on that sacred right. To call this bill a solution in search of a problem is being charitable.”

After passing the Senate with bipartisan opposition and only Republican support, Senate Bill 1108 passed the House State Affairs Committee in similar fashion and could soon hit the House floor.

In hearings, testimony has been bipartisan and overwhelmingly against Idaho’s SB 1108, a bill that makes qualifying an initiative or referendum much more difficult.  In addition to an already very onerous statewide signature requirement, SB 1108 would add a severe new condition that petitions also contain 6% of registered voters in at least 18 legislative districts. Adding 18 new petition drives to qualify a ballot measure would dramatically drive up costs.

In Colorado, a citizen’s defense group, the Basic Freedom Defense Fund (BFDF), is forming a committee to recall State Senator John Morse (Colorado Springs), the Democratic President of the State Senate. Morse had sponsored Senate Bill 13-196, a bill which would impose penalties on owners of so-called “assault weapons”, making them liable for any damage caused by them.

“It really made a lot of people upset, it’s an affront to the Second Amendment, it’s an affront to the Constitution and it’s an affront to the oath that he took,” explained BFDF Spokesperson Anthony Garcia.

State representative Michael McLachlan (D-Durango) may also be under the gun of recall efforts by the BFDF over firearm issues.

Today, Citizens in Charge released a mailer sent to residents of Montgomery County, Maryland Delegate Eric Leudtke’s district informing citizens of the destructive impact Leudtke’s House Bill 493 will have on the state’s citizen referendum process.

“Delegate Leudtke’s bill, filled with new rules, regulations and signature disqualification penalties, will effectively stop the public’s ability to use the petition process in Maryland,” said Paul Jacob, president of Citizens in Charge.

In 2011, young Muna N’Diaye was kidnapped by her father and taken to Mali.  Her mother, Dr. Nolle Hunter, naturally wants her daughter back. To bring Muna home, Dr. Hunter has worked with the State Department’s Office of Children’s Issues as well as Senator Mitch McConnell and her local congressional representative, Hal Rogers of Kentucky.

Then, Hunter went to the White House’s “We the People” petition website in an attempt to bring more attention to the situation.

Citizens in Charge Foundation has released a report on Initiative and Referendum in the State of Idaho, entitled, “Image Idaho: The Citizen Check.” The paper details the travails Idaho citizens face when seeking to take their constitutional part in the governing of the Gem State. Specifically, the report addresses Senate Bill 1108, which would impose a severe signature distribution requirement and complicate efforts to circulate petitions. The analysis also includes detailed appendices comparing Idaho’s I&R requirements with those in other states.

Download the report Here

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