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I support Initiative 517 because I am a strong believer in our initiative rights which our state has had for over a century. Our right to initiative and petition our government is the most important tool we have to push back when government does things we don’t like.
Initiative 517’s primary policy change is guaranteeing you the right to vote on qualified initiatives.
In a recent unanimous ruling, the Washington State Supreme Court rejected an effort by special interest groups to stop the people from voting on a qualified initiative. The court’s reason: “Because ballot measures are often used to express popular will and to send a message to elected representatives, pre-election review unduly infringes on free speech.”
A referendum campaign to overturn an Ohio Internet-sweepstakes-cafe law appears to have fizzled, but backers may not know for sure until today.
The Committee to Protect Ohio Jobs stopped collecting signatures on an updated referendum petition yesterday and began taking inventory of what already had been gathered, spokesman Mark Weaver said.
Asked whether the committee will file with Secretary of State Jon Husted’s office by today’s deadline, Weaver said, “If we have enough (signatures), we’ll file. If we don’t, we won’t.”
Read More: here
A lawsuit challenging the petition-gathering process that got a $950 million school-tax proposal on the November ballot was filed late Wednesday, according to a group opposing the measure.
The group, Coloradans for Real Education Reform, said Bob Hagedorn, a former Democratic state senator from Aurora, and Norma Anderson, a former Republican lawmaker from Lakewood, filed the suit in Denver District Court claiming that 39,555 of the signatures gathered for the ballot measure are invalid.
Read more:here
The Washington Post’s Reid Wilson reports on a bill passed by the Assembly and Senate that Gov. Jerry Brown may sign this week:
Read More: here
California Gov. Jerry Brown has about a week and a half to decide whether to sign or veto legislation that would put substantial burdens on groups aiming to collect signatures for ballot initiatives, while exempting unions from the stringent new rules.
The measure, Assembly Bill 857, would require 10 percent of signatures for any given ballot initiative to be collected by volunteers, rather than by paid signature gatherers. The number of signatures supporters need to turn in is based on the number of votes in the last gubernatorial election; that means groups would have to rely on volunteers to gather a little more than 50,000 of the 504,760 valid signatures required to get an initiative on the ballot.
One initiative on the November ballot would guarante the right to vote on qualified initiatives — I-517. It’s an initiative on initiatives if you will. I believe the right of initiative, and to petition our government to change things when it takes actions we don’t agree with, is the single most important tool citizens have to force our state government to listen to us. They’ve proven over and over again, that no matter what we think, they believe they know what’s best for us down there in Olympia. The initiative process is one of the few ways citizens have to keep the tax-and-spend zealots in check.
Read More: here
Last Friday, Ohio’s 1851 Center for Constitutional Law, a non-partisan legal foundation, filed a federal court challenge against Senate Bill 47, which reinstitutes a residency requirement (struck down previously in federal court) and also reduces the time petitioners have to gather signatures. The law, passed earlier this year by the Republican-controlled legislature and signed into law by Republican Governor John Kasich, went into effect in June.
Organized labor has every right to promote initiatives. Labor-backed initiatives often resonate with the electorate and occasionally with editorial boards.
But labor doesn’t deserve a special edge. For this reason, Gov. Jerry Brown should veto Assembly Bill 857, a loaded piece of legislation that masquerades as initiative reform.
Assemblyman Paul Fong, a Silicon Valley Democrat, said in three press releases that he proposed to “ensure the sanctity of the initiative process” by requiring that unpaid volunteers gather some signatures to qualify statewide ballot measures.
Read more of this editorial: here
I am not a big fan of recall elections. This example of direct democracy is largely an artifact of the progressive era in American politics, when it was assumed that state legislatures were corrupt gaggles of bought-and-paid-for politicians. Allowing the voters to send the rascals packing ahead of schedule was supposed to be a remedy for the said corruption.
It rarely works that way. It is the responsibility of elected legislatures to deal with genuine corruption, either in their own assemblies or in the executive branch of the government. When they fail to do so, it is the responsibility of the voters to remember that in the next regularly scheduled election.
Officials with Anchorage municipal unions say they have turned in more than enough signatures to place a measure before voters that would repeal a law restricting union powers.
Unions turned in 22,136 voter signatures, more than triple the required 7,124 to place the measure on the ballot, the Anchorage Daily News reported Tuesday.
The Anchorage Assembly voted 6-5 on March 26 to approve what Mayor Dan Sullivan calls The Responsible Labor Act. The law prohibits union members from going on strike and eliminates binding arbitration.
Read More: here.
The Oregon Supreme Court handed down a decision Thursday that requires the proponents of a right-to-work ballot initiative to rewrite the ballot title that Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum originally approved.
The initiative title, sponsored by attorney Jill Gibson Odell, currently says, “BALLOT TITLE: Prohibits compulsory payment of union representation costs by public employees choosing not to join union.”
Read More: here
A new Arizona law that would make it more difficult for minor-party candidates to land on the ballot and prohibit some political groups from collecting absentee ballots before Election Day will likely be put to a vote next year after opponents of the measure turned in significantly more than the required number of signatures last week.
The bill enrages Democrats and representatives of smaller parties who say it makes it harder for legitimate voters to cast a ballot, and for third-party candidates to gain access to that ballot in the first place.
Supporters of the referendum turned in more than 146,000 signatures, 60,000 more than required to force a vote.
Voters in Arizona will get a chance to ratify or block a piece of legislation passed in the waning days of the last legislative session. More than 146,000 signatures were turned in for verification to the Secretary of State, of which, 86,405 need to be validated.
The bill has provisions which drastically alter election laws in the Grand Canyon State. These provisions include limiting who is able to turn in an early ballot at a polling place and making requirements regarding the ability to propose laws through the initiative process much more onerous.
“The initiative process is designed to allow voters to consider an issue in a democratic fashion,’ said Kari Nienstedt, state director of the Humane Society of the United States.
Gun-rights advocates were victorious last night in Colorado, as State Senate President John Morse and fellow senator Angela Giron were both ousted in their respective recall elections. The recalls were historic, as no state-level officials had ever been recalled in the Centennial State, though numerous local officials have been.
In the election for Morse, the results were very close, 51-49 percent – a difference of less than 800 votes. Giron’s recall was more one-sided, with a 12 percent point margin totaling over 4,000 votes. The voter turnout was much higher in Giron’s district.
Today is Election Day in Colorado for the recall of state senators John Morse and Angela Giron, the first recalls of state (as opposed to local) elected officials in Colordao history.
The recalls began after Senate President Morse and Sen. Giron backed legislation tightening gun control earlier this year. Tens of thousands of citizens in their respective districts signed petitions to trigger today’s elections, which have become something of a referendum on gun issues with possible national ramifications.
Read more here:
Denver Post: Historic election Tuesday over gun control votes