Citizens in Charge

At Citizens in Charge Foundation we seek to keep the initiative & referendum process open and accessible for those citizens who have it, and expand the process to those citizens who do not. We believe that the initiative & referendum process is a right that every citizen should have, regardless of what issue or policy they intend to use it for.

The saga in Washington state over whether or not to make public the names and personal information of referendum petition signers continues. The U.S. Supreme Court is looking into the matter, but some in Washington don’t want to wait. They want this information public, and they want it now.

State Rep. Reuven Carlyle filed a bill for the next session that would make it a specific law that the names, home addresses, and signatures of those citizens who sign a petition are made public. What kind of precedent would this set?

We’ve previously blogged about the attempts out in Washington state to make public the names and information of citizens who sign petitions. Unfortunately, that may be happening here in Northern Virginia as well. This article in the Sun Gazette newspaper explains how in Arlington, VA the petition signatures are public record if requested.

The nation’s highest court will decide by January 11 if they will hear arguments in Doe v. Reed, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The case hinges on whether signatures on a referendum petition fall under the state’s public records disclosure law.

Last week, as I was writing about some of the ways the peoples’ voice is silenced, the St. Louis, Missouri police were busy silencing Gustavo Rendon by taking away his first amendment right to free speech.

Howard County Citizens for Open Government are this month’s Lilburne Award Honorees. This group of citizens from Howard County, Maryland is currently working to protect their first amendment petitioning rights which were restricted by the Howard County Board of Elections earlier this year. To read more about the group and their case go here.

Never short on examples of the many attempts around the country to take away the peoples’ right to initiative and referendum by gutting the process, Norfolk, VA residents narrowly escaped a doubling of the signature requirement to put measures on the city ballot Wednesday.  Thanks to the strong opposition shown by tho

Last month, Ohio state representative Jennifer Garrison announced a plan for what she inappropriately refers to as a “Ballot Integrity Act”. The proposal would require people who help initiative and referendum campaigns collect signatures, and the companies they work for, to go through an onerous and potentially expensive registration process before they could work on a petition campaign.The law would also allow voters’ signatures to be thrown out because of mistakes made by campaign workers.

After blogging yesterday about some of the petty ways initiative opponents try to block people from excercising their voting rights by throwing out their signatures on a petition, I started thinking about the wider struggle to protect those rights. Special interests and many politicians simply don’t like the initiative process because it threatens their hold on power. The last thing they want is for you, the voter, to have a say in how their government is run.

Richard Winger at Ballot Access News uses a situation in Maine to make a great point about the many and often absurd reasons that petition signatures can be challenged around the country:

We blogged previously about the petition in Denver, CO to get a measure on the ballot to create a UFO Commission. Yesterday, the petition signatures were finally validated and accepted, and voters will weigh in on the issue next year.

The effort to get this measure on the ballot began in April of 2008 and attracted attention from around the world. This is the first serious effort to use the initiative process for this topic.

If you havent checked out our Citizens in Charge Foundation Youtube channel recently we’ve put up a handful of new videos in the past couple of months. There are also quite a few videos featuring Paul Jacob from various groups and past events. It’s definitely worth the visit, so go check it out here and make sure to rate the videos.

The staff at Citizens in Charge Foundation would like to wish you all a happy and safe Thanksgiving.

The Portland Press Herald has this brief news story today about the legal challenge to Maine’s Secretary of State over certifying petition signatures.

Since it’s Turkey-Day week and everyone is gearing up for the holiday season, the battle over “Christmas Creep” into the Thanksgiving holiday begins.

Personally, I love Christmas music, but hearing it in large amounts before Thanksgiving may be a bit much.