Citizens in Charge

Today, Citizens in Charge Foundation, a transpartisan national voter rights group focused on the ballot initiative and referendum process, presented the Concerned Citizens Council of Big Spring, Texas with the February 2010 John Lilburne Award.  The group is being recognized for standing up for the petition rights of all citizens by filing suit against the city council for violating the state open meetings law in an attempt to block the Concerned Citizens Council’s petition.

Today, long time ballot initiative rights activist””and Citizens in Charge Foundation Maine Citizen State Coordinator””Mary Adams informed the Maine Legislature’s Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee of the harm posed to the citizen initiative process by a series of bills.

An ethics initiative that is moving through the political system in Utah continues to cause controversy. The latest development is the whether or not the process of removing petition signatures can or should be streamlined. Citizens in Utah are allowed to remove their names from petition signature lists if they change their minds, but some are complaining that it is too difficult to do so.

“Spite, codified.” That was what Seattle Times columnist Bruce Ramsey recently called six bills in the Washington state legislature that aim to restrict the initiative process. All the bills would severely hamper Washingtonians’  constitutionally guaranteed right to put state laws on the ballot through petitioning. Ramsey says all the bills are sponsored by bitter legislators who want to take a slap at perennial initiative sponsor Tim Eyman.

Because Hawaiians have no statewide initiative or referendum rights, the Aloha State earned a “D” on our recently released state-by-state report card on initiative and referendum rights. We like to think that the state’s poor performance will prompt action to give the people more of a voice in government by creating an open and accessible initiative process. Unfortunately, at least one talking head in the state doesn’t want the people to have a greater say in their state government.

I put this story up on the Newswire earlier today, so you should certainly go take a look. It’s out of San Diego and it involves a potential vote on mayoral powers in the city. The City Council voted 6-2 to delay letting the citizens vote on the issue. Democrats voted to delay the vote, and Republicans voted to go ahead with it.

In the “Initiative & Referendum Almanac”, the principle reference text for those of us in the world of initiative and referendum, the section on New Jersey history starts out noting that “It is ironic that New Jersey, the state where the national initiative and referendum movement originated, never adopted provisions for I&R.” It’s not only ironic, but sad, because like citizens in the other 25 states that don’t recognize initiative and referendum rights, New Jersey citizens could ce