Citizens in Charge

Today is your last day to book a discount rate hotel room for the U.S Conference on Initiative & Referendum in San Francisco this July.

If you’re planning on attending hurry up and book your room so you don’t miss out on this great deal!

U.S. District Judge Philip Brimmer on Friday put a temporary hold on part of a controversial 2009 bill restricting, among other things, how and when voters can be asked to sign a petition. You can read the judge’s order here.

Today marks the beginning of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, with South Africa taking on Mexico this morning in the Cup’s opening match. The match resulted in a 1-1 draw, but was still pretty entertaining to watch.

In honor of the start of the World Cup I direct your attention to the petition to bring the Cup back to the United States. The U.S. is in the bidding process for the 2018 or 2022 Cup, and it would be great to bring it back. So go use your citizen petition power and sign it!

On Tuesday, June 8, I testified before the subcommittee of the Republican Party of Texas (RPT) Platform Committee that handled the pro-initiative and referendum (I&R) resolutions that came out of the Senatorial District Conventions.  The cards were stacked against us as members of this subcommittee were hand picked and all were anti-I&R.  Shirley Spellerberg, the woman who proudly told me at the hearing that she was the one responsible for getting I&R of the platform in 1996, was selected for this committee to ensure that it would fail again.

The Laguna Hills, California city council recently decided not to put a term-limits measure on the ballot for voters. They cited the fact that a citizen initiative campaign was already underway to put the measure on the ballot:

A quick update on the citizen initiative votes from yesterday in California and Maine.

California’s citizen initiatives, Prop 16 and 17, were both defeated at the polls yesterday. Prop 16 voted down by a 52.3% to 47.7% margin. Prop 17 lost 51.7% to 48.3%.

In addition to the many primary elections happening today around the country, voters in California and Maine are also voting on state-wide ballot questions.

California has 5 state-wide measures up for a vote today, but only two are citizen initiatives, Prop 16 and Prop 17.

Californians will go to the polls in today’s statewide primary election not only to choose candidates for this November, but also to decide questions about property taxes, primary elections, auto insurance and energy. You can follow the results as they come in on the Secretary of State’s website.

(LAKE RIDGE, VA) – Today, Citizens in Charge Foundation, a transpartisan national voter rights group focused on the ballot initiative and referendum process, presented Maine Citizen State Coordinator Mary Adams with the June 2010 John Lilburne Award. Adams is being honored this month for her work over the decades in not only utilizing, but defending and expanding the initiative & referendum process in the state of Maine.

As Alamo Heights initiative and referendum activists geared up for a petition drive to ask the city to recognize the power of citywide initiative, referendum and recall three new members of the city council beat them to the punch by proposing such a process themselves. Activists in the city of 7,400 inform me that expansion of democracy was on the agenda for the new members at the outset of their terms. You can read about it here.

Last year, Citizens in Charge filed suit in Nebraska to challenge the state law requiring petition signature gatherers be residents of the state. The law places an unconstitutional burden on citizens of the state seeking to put a measure on the ballot.

Over the weekend, the Libertarian Party of Nebraska joined in the effort to block the unconstitutional portion of the law:

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic novel, The Scarlet Letter, a young woman is forced to wear a scarlet-red letter ‘A’ on her shirt as punishment for adultery. His novel is set in Puritan Boston in the 1600’s.

Colorado’s constitution guarantees all stat citizens the power of initiative “as to all local, special, and municipal legislation of every character in of for their respective municipalities.” One restriction on this is that initiatives must be “legislative,” not “administrative.” Any initiative that is deemed “administrative” cannot be certified for the ballot.

Utah’s highest court will hear arguments tomorrow to decide if signatures collected over the internet count on Utah petitions. The effort to allow signatures is being backed by the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

This is an interesting and great story in the Native American Times. The tribe’s Supreme Court ruled that an initiative led and passed by the people to reduce the size of their council and give a line-item veto to the president was valid and legal: