initiatives
A November ballot crowded with hot-button issues for both liberals and conservatives is likely to dominate Oregon’s statewide political landscape in 2014.
Oregon voters could get to weigh in on marijuana legalization, privatizating the state’s liquor business, gay marriage, so-called “right-to-work” legislation for public employees, tax increases on big business and high earners, and renewable-energy requirements for utilities.
The Legislature-approved driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants already has been referred to voters. The groups proposing other measures will need to submit enough valid signatures by July to qualify for the November ballot.
Californians could be faced in November with a proposal to dramatically alter the pension and benefit system for public employees. San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed has submitted a statewide ballot initiative that would allow government agencies to negotiate changes to current employees’ future retirement benefits, reversing the long-standing principle that once a public employee is hired, his or her retirement benefits cannot be reduced.
Direct democracy, and specifically the initiative process, is advancing around the world.
Except in the U.S. and in California.
Ireland’s constitutional convention has voted overwhelming to introduce a new initiative process that would include both petitions to the government (what some Californians persist in calling, misleadingly, the “indirect initiative” even though it is a direct appeal to lawmakers) and petitions that would trigger popular votes.
Read More: here
While much of the country is gearing up for the holidays, political forces in Sacramento are girding for battle.
Already, special interests are lined up with plans that could shape next year’s general election ballot. They are considering propositions to increase medical malpractice awards, hike tobacco taxes and give local governments the right to scale back public employee pensions, among other ideas.
Each of the proposals could spawn campaigns costing tens of millions of dollars. Decisions about whether to proceed will be made in the next couple of weeks as de facto deadlines loom.
Next November, South Dakota voters will decide the outcome of two initiated measures — one raising the minimum wage and the other limiting health insurance companies.
If history is any judge, both are likely to fail.
Only 13 of 51 initiated measures attempted since statehood have earned a majority, with an average support of 44 percent.
Some of those successful measures have reflected powerful sentiments among the state population: to keep nuclear waste out, to tax cigarettes more and, most popular of all, to impose term limits on members of Congress — though that was ruled unconstitutional.
Read More: here
Earlier this week, legal briefs were filed by all parties after a Nov. 14-15 hearing regarding the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction against Arkansas’s new, draconian anti-petition law, Act 1413, which passed the legislature earlier this year as emergency legislation.
The lawsuit, Spencer v. Martin, was brought by the ACLU of Arkansas and the Public Law Center on behalf of plaintiffs Paul Spencer, a leader of Regnat Populus, and Neal Sealy, executive director of Arkansas Community Organizations. The suit was filed against the defendant, the Arkansas Secretary of State (acting in an official capacity), with the state’s Attorney General having intervened into the case on the side of the defendant.
The Legislature might be flatlining and cobwebs are gathering around the White Sepulcher’s Corinthian columns, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a whole lotta politickin’ going on in the Golden State.
A largely under-the-radar industry is shifting into second and third gear in anticipation of 2014, even-numbered election year that it is. This motley band is the ballot measuremongers who profit off pimping and pillorying initiatives they help put before voters.
They are pollsters, strategists, ad buyers, signature gatherers, lawyers, videographers, direct mailers, fundraisers, mouthpieces and coalition builders—a phalanx of folk who critics claim feast off the host body of the vox populi. If that’s true, it’s quite the sumptuous spread.
Two weeks ago, all across the United States, citizens with the right to vote once again went to their local polling place to exercise one of the greatest rights provided under the U.S. democratic system of law.
In many states, not only did those same voters cast ballots for the candidates they felt would best represent their interests, they were also asked a question or set of questions in the referendum voting section of the ballot.
Now, the utilization of the referendum is far from being a new concept. However, the types of questions and their potential consequences have become increasingly complex.
This week’s qualification of a referendum for the November 2014 ballot will be the sixth time in a decade that voters get the final say on a state law.
A “yes” vote will uphold this year’s legislation ratifying the state’s casino compact with Madera County’s North Fork Rancheria of Mono Indians. A “no” vote will overturn it.
The as-yet-unnumbered referendum is the 49th to qualify for a California ballot since 1912, after the process was included in then-Gov. Hiram Johnson’s package of government reforms.
Read more: here
Last week, Citizens in Charge President Paul Jacob testified as an expert witness in a two-day hearing before Circuit Court Judge Mary McGowan, who is being asked to issue a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of Act 1413, pending a trial on whether the statute, passed earlier this year by legislators, violates the political rights of Arkansans under the Arkansas and the U.S. Constitutions.
Californians have a love-hate relationship with direct democracy.
We love that we have the ability to set the politicians straight, either by getting a jump on them on the next big issue or reversing course when we think they’ve made a big mistake.
But we’re not wild about reading through all those damn initiatives that appear on the ballot every year, or sorting through the claims and counter claims of the interest groups that sponsor and oppose them. And we don’t like the way that big money pays to get most measures on the ballot and then underwrites the campaigns.
Read more: here
Note: This post was written last month. Eyman’s measure lost in the November elections, winning just over 37 percent of the votes.
If you haven’t heard of Tim Eyman, you probably haven’t lived in Washington state. He’s a libertarian-minded activist and force of nature who is responsible for more initiatives than any one in that state’s history.
I know and like Tim personally, but disagree with him not only on policy issues but also on the initiative process. Still, there’s a lot of good in his current initiative, numbered 517 in Washington state, and people interested in governance reform in California should take a look at it.
San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Steven Greenhut wrote at Reason.com last week that “Californians will need to pay close attention” to proposed reforms of the state’s initiative process, arguing that, “Unfortunately, some recent initiative reforms have been more about self-interest — about rigging the football game, if you will — than about helping the public have a more fair and informed political debate.”
Noting that Californians have enjoyed the power of the initiative for 102 years, Greenhut explained that even though some questionable special interests have “proposed” some questionable initiatives for their own benefit, the initiative process in the Golden State remains a critical check by the people on their legislature.
Willie Brown, the legendary Assembly speaker and former San Francisco mayor, says he has never voted for a ballot initiative.
“Not one,” he asserts emphatically without hesitation.
“I’ve always, without question, been opposed to the initiative process. Period,” he told an initiative reform conference in Sacramento last week.
Read More: here
Corporations and some of the wealthiest Americans have spent more than $1 billion in the past 18 months on ballot initiatives in just 11 states, an unprecedented explosion of money used to pass new laws and influence the public debate.
According to campaign finance reports in 11 states with long histories of initiatives and referendums, the billion dollars spent since the beginning of 2012 is more than has been spent in any two-year period. Supporters and opponents of ballot measures spent nearly as much, $965 million, in 2005 and 2006.