Citizens in Charge

This story went up on our newswire earlier today, and I just thought I’d point it out on the blog here.

Last week Citizens in Charge held a joint press conference with Connecticut Citizens for Ballot Initiative at the State Capitol in Hartford to release the Connecticut results of our nationwide poll on support for initiative & referendum.

We just posted a video of the event with a mashup of some of the different speakers at the press conference. It’s posted on the website and on our YouTube Channel. Make sure to check it out.

Kim R. Burningham, chair of Utahns for Ethical Government, explains the latest controversy surrounding signatures on the group’s petition in the Salt Lake Tribune:

 

The Tribune’s Aug. 19 editorial (“Ethics initiative: Lawmakers should follow lead”) says that while our initiative contains needed substance, it can’t go on this year’s ballot and Utahns for Ethical Government should trash more than 115,000 signatures we’ve submitted, starting over to guarantee “freshness.”

Citizens in Charge President Paul Jacob sat down with Eric O’Keefe from Sam Adams Alliance while out in San Francisco earlier this month to talk about the initiative & referendum process and citizen rights.

Sam Adams Alliance posted the podcast of it last night on their website. It’s a good interview and you should definitely check it out here.

From the press conference this morning in Hartford, CT here is a writeup on Connecticut News Junkie:

(HARTFORD, CT) – Citizens in Charge, a national voter rights group focused on the ballot initiative and referendum process, along with Connecticut Citizens for Ballot Initiative, will be holding a press conference Wednesday morning in Hartford, CT to release the findings of a statewide poll on support for initiative & referendum rights.

Audrey Wall from the Council of State Governments talks about the poll recently conducted by Citizens in Charge Foundation, as well as the success of the 2010 US Conference on Initiative & Referendum and the 2010 Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy.

 

 

 

You are probably wondering what to do this weekend right?

Why not read through the first two reports in our Truth in Governance project? Find out for yourself if petition signature fraud truly is a rampant problem in the initiative process, as some claim. You can also find out how money is influencing initiative campaigns in California. Who spends? Who wins?

Check them out here.

For those of you who were not able to attend the conference, we’ve uploaded the speaker bios from the official conference program.

Feel free to take a look and see who spoke to the hundreds in attendance over the 6 day gathering.

You can check out the bios here.

Hopefully, many of you have already checked out “Is the F-Word Overused: A Report on Petition Signature Fraud” on the Citizens in Charge Foundation website.

In addition to the report, Brandon Holmes debated Ohio State Representative Jennifer Garrison at the U.S. Conference on Initiative & Referendum on the subject of petition signature fraud.

Today marks the 90th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote. On August 18th, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. The 19th Amendment prohibits the government from denying anyone the right to vote based on their sex; it gave women the right to vote.

There is great news in Kansas for citizen initiative rights: