Citizens in Charge

Frederick County officials are calling on residents to sign a petition to hold a referendum on the city of Frederick’s plans to annex three neighborhoods. The county has set up a website listing petition locations and urging people to sign, while developers have paid city officials to send a letter to all registered city voters urging them not to sign.

The Tea Party protests against the growth of government and its ever-increasing power would be well served by the initiative and referendum process, according to a new article today at Big Government. No other process gives citizens such control over their government.

Big Government is a new website launched by Andrew Breitbart.

Last week I discussed a California Assembly bill that was aimed at preventing something that never occurs. Assembly Bill 1068 would ban the writing of contracts that require an initiative to qualify for the ballot before the company that collected the signatures gets paid. As I indicated in my earlier post, such contracts are simply not used in the industry.

On October 13th, the CATO Institute will host a forum featuring former campaign manager for the 2000 Ralph Nader for President campaign and author, Theresa Amato, and author and professor James T. Bennett.

They will be disussing ballot access for third-party and Independent candidates and how the system is setup to keep them out.