Citizens in Charge

With a controversial elections law headed for a possible repeal, focus at the state Capitol is shifting to what, if anything, will replace it.

Opponents of House Bill 2196, which passed a key committee Thursday on a 4-2 party-line vote, say lawmakers should not tinker with further election-law changes if the Legislature repeals the elections bill it passed last June.

But some Republicans have indicated parts of the elections law should be enacted on a piecemeal basis this year, arguing changes are needed to tighten elections procedures.

Read More (With video): here

he Nevada Supreme Court on Monday ruled that six citizens who filed three ballot initiative petitions in 2010 cannot be sued by Boulder City, which challenged the validity of the issues.

The court ruled that the citizens are protected by law and sent the case back to District Court to determine how much Boulder City must pay for legal costs incurred by the petitioners.

They had gathered signatures to place on the 2010 ballot initiative petitions to require the City Council to get voter approval before going into debt of $1 million or more; limit the terms of members of city commissions and committees to 12 years; and limit the city to one municipal golf course.

With the turn of the New Year, new initiatives will take the stage and petitioners will hit the streets to rally support for their causes. The causes are as varied as they can be and both local and state-wide issues.  With some already submitted and others in the planning stages, initiatives for many hot-button issues will be championed and fought against in 2014.

In Oregon, an initiative attempting to strike down the state’s gay marriage ban:
http://www.pqmonthly.com/two-court-cases-ballot-initiative-one-big-goal/18148

In Oklahoma, two initiatives advocated by a city councilman to prohibit use of sales tax revenue for new buildings:

Professionals who gather signatures for ballot measures are common on statewide issues. They are less common on local issues, but one group is using the pros to collect enough voter sign-ups — and some are complaining about their tactics.

Since October, the Portlanders for Water Reform has been working to gather more than 29,000 signatures to put their measure on the ballot. The group wants a question on the ballot that will allow Portland voters to decide if an independent board should control the water and sewer departments instead of the city.

Oh tidings of great citizen joy. Last week several groups of activists from across the political spectrum managed to collect enough signatures to get their initiative petitions heading for the 2014 ballot.

Each petition needed 68,911 certified signatures, which means that the signatures collected through the fall had to be validated by city and town clerks as belonging to registered voters before they were turned in to the Secretary of State’s Office on Dec. 4. This means that petition groups aim to collect 100,000 signatures, since many would be either invalid, duplicates or in violation of some regulation. If you’ve never run one of these drives, you can’t imagine how much time and energy they consume.

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.

Earlier this month, the Republican-controlled Wisconsin Assembly took the first step toward preventing voters from forcing recall elections against elected officials not accused of any legal or ethical wrongdoing. While this move may appear self-serving — in 2011 and 2012, three Republican State Senators were removed from office and Gov. Scott Walker (R) had to face voters midway through his term — it raises questions about whether the current recall system several states have is beyond repair.” The Wisconsin Assembly has the right idea: mid-term recalls of public officials without cause hurt America’s republican democracy.

A federal judge has temporarily blocked enforcement of an Ohio law barring out-of-state residents from circulating petitions needed to place an issue or candidate on the ballot.

U.S. District Court Judge Michael Watson said in ruling this week that he could identify no harm that would come to the state from allowing nonresidents to gather signatures.

The injunction comes in a dual challenge by the Libertarian Party of Ohio and a group that includes Citizens in Charge, a ballot access organization, and backers of two active ballot campaigns.

Read More: here

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

An initiative petition to allow for initiative petitions?

“We’re out to get our rights, we’re out for our town to be a good city again,” says Electra, Texas, citizen and activist Sue Howell. She has circulated petitions to amend the city charter to establish a process by which citizens can petition to put ballot initiatives before city voters and to recall elected officials when needed.

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.