Courthouse News Service
Nebraska’s threshold for placing initiatives and referendums on the ballot violates the Firsts Amendment in giving preference to voters in rural counties, a federal judge ruled.
At issue is a stipulation in the Nebraska Constitution that requires petitioners to acquire signatures from “5 percent of the registered voters of each of two-fifths of the counties of the state.”
According to this math, an initiative or referendum petition must be circulated in at least 38 of Nebraska’s 93 counties.
Plaintiff Kent Bernbeck, took issue with the requirement on the grounds of free speech and equal protection.
Read more: Here
Three St. Louis-area hotels failed to stop two cities from placing propositions to levy hotel taxes on the Nov. 2 ballot. The Missouri Court of Appeals denied the hotel’s request to block the ballot initiatives. Richmond Heights and Clayton both approved ordinances in August asking voters if they want the cities to levy a 5 percent hotel tax in order to raise funds to promote tourism.
A federal judge ordered Utah county clerks to keep confidential the names signed electronically on petitions for a “Government Ethics Reform” initiative. Utahns for Ethical Government sued all the county clerks in Utah, claiming it needs the electronic signatures to qualify its initiative for the ballot, but many signers do not want their names made public.     Utahns for Ethical Government needs 95,000 signatures to qualify its initiative for the November ballot. It claims to have gathered 77,000 signatures in ink and at least 18,000 “e-signatures.”
The Alaska Supreme Court again blocked a ballot initiative aimed at getting Alaska residents to vote to secede from the United States. Scott Kohlhaas first tried in 2003 to get a ballot initiative asking Alaska voters if they wanted the state to secede from the union. The lieutenant governor refused to place the initiative on the ballot, and the superior and supreme courts agreed that the effort was unconstitutional.