Citizens in Charge

The 100th Anniversary Celebration of California’s Initiative & Referendum held in Sacramento on October 10 was a great success. Citizens in Charge Foundation, our partner organization, was joined by over 100 Californians to commemorate the centennial and transpartisan dialogue ensued throughout the day-long forum and early evening reception hosted by The Consulate General of Switzerland in San Francisco. The day’s festivities would not have been possible without fellow sponsors: California Forward & Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Foundation and co-sponsors: Arno Political Consultants, Ballotpedia, Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership, The Federalist Society of Sacramento, The Humane Society of the United States, National Voter Outreach, New America Foundation and XS Energy.

For those who were unable to join us, you can find the program of events complete with biographies on speakers here:

100th Anniversary Celebration Program

An optional survey was distributed to attendees and the results can be found below. As you can see, the majority of participants felt:

·        That the initiative process is more the solution than the problem.

·        That they trust the people more than the legislature to make political decisions.

·        That the initiative process is more transparent than the legislative process.

·        That they hardly trust the legislature at all to make the needed reforms to the initiative process without unnecessarily restricting the process.

·        That reform of the initiative process should make it easier to place issues on the ballot.

Respondents in attendance identified themselves across a wide range of professions including:

Legislative Professional, Petition Professional, Campaign Professional, Attorney/Legal Professional, Non-Profit Professional, For-Profit Business Professional, Public Employee & Other.

And politically, self-identified overwhelmingly with the Democrat Party but, the following political parties were also represented:

American Independent, Libertarian, Republican, Independent, Non-Affiliated & Other.

The gender breakdown was almost split down the middle and the ages ranged from 20 to 70 or wiser.

Full survey results can be found here:

100th Anniversary Celebration Survey Results

Thank you to all sponsors, co-sponsors, speakers and attendees for joining us to celebrate 100 years of California’s Initiative & Referendum. I look forward to working with you to make the process more open and accessible to average Californians!