Citizens in Charge

Michigan’s State Board of Canvassers voted not to certify an initiative to raise the state’s minimum wage for placement on this November’s election ballot.

The group Raise Michigan turned in 318,425 signatures on petitions, needing 258,088 to be verified as those of registered voters in the Wolverine State.  The group just edged over that goal under the scrutiny of the Secretary of State’s office with 259,756 verified signatures, just 1,578 more than necessary.

Even after the petition submission deadline dates for many states have passed, efforts are underway to collect signatures for the 2015 ballot and beyond.  In Ohio, a green energy initiative was given the go-ahead to begin gathering signatures to place a series of clean energy proposals on the ballot in 2015.

Now that the Ohio Ballot Board has approved the language, the group Yes for Ohio’s Energy Future needs to collect at least 385,000 verified voter signatures in the Buckeye State to get the proposed constitutional amendment on the statewide ballot next year.  The proposed amendment would spend $1.3 billion each year improving infrastructure and developing  clean energy sources such as geothermal and solar.

For citizens of the Natural State, a natural medicine won’t appear on the ballot this November.  Arkansans for Compassionate Care decided not to turn in signatures for a proposed medical marijuana ballot measure as it had not collected enough by yesterday’s deadline. The group announced gathering just over 50,000 signatures, but needed 62,507 valid voter signatures to qualify for the ballot. Campaign director Melissa Fults said the group would try again for the 2016 election.

An initiative campaign in Oregon to legalize recreational marijuana has submitted what they believe to be sufficient signatures to qualify for a place on November’s ballot. Proponents of the initiative, a group called New Approach Oregon submitted 145,710 signatures, which is well above the 87,213 verified signatures required.

“We’ve verified many of the signatures ourselves and we will indeed qualify for the ballot,” New Approach Oregon spokesman Anthony Johnson told reporters.

If passed, the initiative would legalize recreational marijuana for those over 21 and allow the state Liquor Control Commission to regulate retailers, processors and growers of the drug.

In Nevada, the deadline for collecting signatures has come and gone, with no citizen-initiated measures able to qualify for this November’s ballot. Petitions were circulated on two conservative-backed measures, but both failed to collect the 101,000 required signatures. One measure would have required voters to present a photo ID at the polls and the other would have blocked state government from setting up a state exchange as part of the national Affordable Care Act.

No citizen-initiated measures have qualified for the Nevada ballot since 2006. 

Measure 1, a constitutional amendment that moves the initiative petition deadline up 30 days – to just before the North Dakota state fair, so that initiative sponsors lose that very important meeting place for gathering signatures – passed narrowly yesterday in a very low turnout primary election.

State legislators introduced the amendment as HCR 3034 and passed it at the request of long-serving Secretary of State Al Jaeger, who argued his office needed more time to review petitions and that more time was also necessary to accommodate legal challenges to ballot measures.

On tomorrow’s statewide primary ballot in North Dakota is Measure 1, a constitutional amendment that would cut 30 days from the signature gathering period, by making the petition deadline 120 days prior to the general election, rather than the current 90 days.

Secretary of State Al Jaeger brought the measure to the legislature in 2013, and a bipartisan majority of legislators jumped at the idea, with 64 percent of Senators and 85 percent in the House voting to put Measure 1 on the ballot.  Jaeger argued the measure will “safeguard the credibility of the petition process.”

The chairman of MDPetitions.com, Maryland Delegate Neil Parrott, announced that his most recent petition effort, a referendum on the so-called “Bathroom Bill,” fell short of its signature collection goal.

The petition needed to collect 18,579 signatures from registered state voters by May 31 and a total of 55,736 by June 30. But only 17,575 signatures had been collected by supporters of the referendum by the deadline.

Proponents of the “Yes for Independent Maps” initiative campaign in Illinois were dealt a blow last week when election authorities found over half the signatures checked as part of a random sample were invalid.  Officials within the initiative campaign attacked the random sample process, contending there are more than enough valid signatures to put the measure on the ballot in November.

“We believe that the state ran a rushed, uneven, and back-room signature validation process, and that’s the reason for the unacceptable validity rate,” said Campaign Manager Michael Kolenc.

In a “Frank-tastic” op-ed appearing today at AL.com, Alabama initiative rights activist Frank Dillman calls for the adoption of statewide initiative and referendum for the citizens of the Yellowhammer state.  

“Citizens in 26 states and thousands of cities have a greater voice than Alabamians,” argues Dillman, “because our legislative process permits trumping 9-5 working voices with well-funded special interest groups.”

Dillman is the creator of Let Bama Vote, a group dedicated to convincing legislators to propose a constitutional amendment establishing a system whereby citizens can initiate ballot measures or refer acts of the legislature to a public vote. Their website is LetBamaVote.org.

In recent weeks, both Illinois and Missouri have seen their signature-submission deadline pass with less than a handful of initiative petitions crossing the finish in time.

On the first of May, Illinois term limits supporters submitted nearly 600,000 signatures. Days later, a measure to reform the redistricting process turned in over 500,000 signatures. Both measures are likely to qualify, as the requirement for a spot on this November’s ballot is only 298,399 valid signatures.

On May 4, Missourians submitted two petitions: one measure would provide six weeks of early voting in the Show-Me State and the other would tie teacher retention and pay to student performance, as measured by standardized testing.

In his latest book, “Unstoppable,” consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader lauds Citizens in Charge as a “convergent group” bringing people together from across the political spectrum.

In the book, Nader presents 25 reform ideas that cannot be stopped, one of which is to “spread the initiative, referendum and recall to every state and municipality.”

Urging “liberals and conservatives” to “look straight at the reforms that are needed to give more choices for the voters in a competitive democracy,” Nader writes that “Citizens in Charge” is “already at work on this objective.”

Colorado’s leading opponent of citizen control of government, Rep. Lois Court (D-Denver), is at it again. Court is seeking to amend the state’s constitution to ratchet-up the requirements for citizen-initiated petitions — something she has attempted repeatedly during her tenure in the legislature.

Rep. Court’s House Concurrent Resolution 2 would fully double the minimum signature threshold for initiative constitutional amendments, from the current 86,104 to a whopping 172,208. The amendment would also impose a new distribution requirement, mandating that a minimum number of valid signatures be gathered from each of the state’s seven congressional districts to qualify a petition.

Arkansas Circuit Court Judge Mary McGowan issued a final judgment striking down a myriad of provisions in Act 1413 as unconstitutional violations of the rights of Arkansas citizens to petition their government. Her decision, a major victory for petition rights, will likely now be appealed by the Arkansas Attorney General.

Two organizations, Judicial Watch and Allied Educational Foundation, have filed an amicus curiae brief in the federal lawsuit, Citizens in Charge v. Husted, which seeks a permanent injunction against an Ohio law that bans the recruitment of out-of-state petitioners to collect signatures for ballot initiatives.

“This Ohio law unlawfully limits the right of the people to govern themselves through the initiative process,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Ohio’s law intrudes on a fundamental right not often emphasized by politicians – the citizens’ right to place additional checks on the power of their elected representatives.”