Newswire
A group of residents, upset by the city’s plans to construct a new parking lot downtown and remove a ballfield, is circulating a referendum petition that it hopes will put the issue on the November ballot.
“We would like to see no loss of recreational space,” said resident Rita Scott, who is spearheading a committee of 12 residents who are circulating the petition. “There are lots of options for parking.”
Mayor Ann Womer Benjamin believes the Kiwanis-Moore Playground project, which consists of a parking lot, walkway, field improvements and landscaping, “is a first step toward improving Town Center, which can be the core of growth and activity that benefits everyone.”
Supporters of a referendum to put Seattle’s $15 minimum wage to a public vote have turned in what they are confident will be enough signatures to qualify the measure for the November ballot.
Forward Seattle co-founder and Seattle small business owner Kathrina Tugadi tells KIRO Radio’s Jason Rantz show they have gathered nearly 20,000 signatures, far more than the 16,500 signatures required to qualify the referendum.
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Sixteen years ago, D.C. activists gathered signatures to let voters decide if the District should be among the first in the nation to legalize medical marijuana. Then Congress stepped in, and city officials were not even allowed to count the ballots that voters had cast.
With a boost from the Fourth of July and other summer celebrations, three groups circulating ballot petitions are confident they will have their measures before voters in November.
Petition drives are underway for ballot measures that would create a new conservation fund, start the school year after Labor Day and change the state pharmacy ownership law. A fourth group, pursuing a shared parenting initiative, has turned in its signatures and is waiting for ballot approval from the North Dakota Secretary of State’s office.
Drawing the stiffest opposition so far is a measure that would create a Clean Water, Wildlife and Parks Trust. It would require setting aside 5 percent of the state’s oil extraction tax revenue annually for conservation.
Supporters of a voter initiative to legalize marijuana for recreational use in Oregon said they submitted more than enough signatures to state election officials on Thursday to qualify the measure for the November ballot.
Only two U.S. states, Washington and Colorado, currently allow recreational marijuana, which remains illegal under federal law, while voters in Alaska are slated to vote on legalization in November.
In heavily Democratic Oregon, where voters rejected legalization two years ago, New Approach Oregon said it turned in 145,710 signatures to the Secretary of State’s Office on Thursday afternoon, well above the 87,213 needed to qualify.
A lot of offices will be decided in Nevada this November, but not a lot of issues. The deadline for signature petitions has passed and the two being circulated didn’t get enough signatures to qualify. Both were conservative-backed issues. One asking that all voters provide photo ID was re-worded and then failed to get enough signatures. The second asked that a statewide health insurance exchange be banned. No signatures were turned in on that one either.
Officials say the number of questions on the ballot in a general election varies every cycle.
Supporters of an initiative that would jettison Oregon’s partisan primaries said they submitted 140,045 signatures to the secretary of state on Monday — appearing to give them enough to earn a spot on the November ballot.
The Every Oregon Voter Counts Petition Committee collected the signatures in just a little over five weeks in what the group said was the fastest effort to collect initiative signatures in Oregon history.
Signature gatherers for a series of oil-and-gas ballot initiatives failed to receive state licensing before they began circulating petitions Wednesday.
Although gatherers hit the streets Wednesday morning, their required license from the Colorado Secretary of State was not issued until Thursday morning.
As a result, organizers said they discarded the handful of signatures gathered Wednesday and started fresh Thursday with a valid license in hand.
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Sponsors of proposed ballot initiatives are scrambling in the final days before a Friday deadline to gather enough signatures to put their issues to Montana voters on the Nov. 4 ballot.
The Montana Secretary of State’s office has approved a dozen initiative petitions for signature-gathering after they passed legal reviews by the attorney general. Officials on Monday did not know how many — if any — would make the deadline.
“We’re just kind of waiting,” said spokeswoman Terri McCoy. “It’s not unusual for all those signatures to come in at the last minute.”
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A California law that requires the sponsors of ballot initiatives to identify themselves on the petitions they circulate to voters violates the constitutional law to speak anonymously, a divided federal appeals court ruled Monday.
“Forced disclosures of this kind are significant encroachments on First Amendment rights,” the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said in a 2-1 decision.