Staff’s blog

All I Want For Christmas...

Thu, Dec 24 2009 by Staff

Those who wish to take away citizen rights are going to get a lump of coal in their stockings this evening.

 

United States District Court Judge Robert Holmes Bell has made Michigan the ninth state to see a requirement that campaign workers who circulate petitions be residents of the state struck down. In 2008 federal appeals courts struck down residency requirements in Ohio, Arizona and Oklahoma. Residency requirements of some kind have previously been ruled unconstitutional in California, Colorado, Wisconsin, Illinois, and New York.

As initiative proponents collect signatures for next year’s ballot, and the Citizens in Charge Foundation staff continues to dig out from last weekend’s snow storm, petition rights activists around the country are getting ready for the restrictions on the initiative and referendum process that will be proposed in upcoming state legislative sessions.

I wanted to remind everyone that if you’re looking for news and views on the initiative & referendum process check out Ballot Box News and Ballot Podium. These websites are your one-stop shop for everything that’s happening around the country in the world of I&R.

Why Not Just Take a Poll?

Thu, Dec 17 2009 by Staff

I came across an article in the Nashville Scene earlier today and found it to be an interesting take on the idea and practice of a non-binding referendum.

The Paul Jacob Story

Wed, Dec 16 2009 by Staff

1988 campaignFrequent readers of this blog will know that the president of Citizens in Charge Foundation, Paul Jacob, was the leader of the movement for legislative term limits in the 1990s. What you may not be aware of, however, is the story of how Paul got into politics in the first place.

At Citizens in Charge Foundation we seek to keep the initiative & referendum process open and accessible for those citizens who have it, and expand the process to those citizens who do not. We believe that the initiative & referendum process is a right that every citizen should have, regardless of what issue or policy they intend to use it for.

The saga in Washington state over whether or not to make public the names and personal information of referendum petition signers continues. The U.S. Supreme Court is looking into the matter, but some in Washington don’t want to wait. They want this information public, and they want it now.

State Rep. Reuven Carlyle filed a bill for the next session that would make it a specific law that the names, home addresses, and signatures of those citizens who sign a petition are made public. What kind of precedent would this set?

We’ve previously blogged about the attempts out in Washington state to make public the names and information of citizens who sign petitions. Unfortunately, that may be happening here in Northern Virginia as well. This article in the Sun Gazette newspaper explains how in Arlington, VA the petition signatures are public record if requested.

The nation’s highest court will decide by January 11 if they will hear arguments in Doe v. Reed, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The case hinges on whether signatures on a referendum petition fall under the state’s public records disclosure law.

Free Speech Writ LargeLast week, as I was writing about some of the ways the peoples’ voice is silenced, the St. Louis, Missouri police were busy silencing Gustavo Rendon by taking away his first amendment right to free speech.

Howard County Citizens for Open Government are this month’s Lilburne Award Honorees. This group of citizens from Howard County, Maryland is currently working to protect their first amendment petitioning rights which were restricted by the Howard County Board of Elections earlier this year. To read more about the group and their case go here.

Never short on examples of the many attempts around the country to take away the Norfolk, Virgninapeoples’ right to initiative and referendum by gutting the process, Norfolk, VA residents narrowly escaped a doubling of the signature requirement to put measures on the city ballot Wednesday.  Thanks to the strong opposition shown by tho

Last month, Ohio state representative Jennifer Garrison announced a plan for what she inappropriately refers to as a “Ballot Integrity Act”. The proposal would require people who help initiative and referendum campaigns collect signatures, and the companies they work for, to go through an onerous and potentially expensive registration process before they could work on a petition campaign.The law would also allow voters’ signatures to be thrown out because of mistakes made by campaign workers.

After blogging yesterday about some of the petty ways initiative opponents try to block people from excercising their voting rights by throwing out their signatures on a petition, I started thinking about the wider struggle to protect those rights. Special interests and many politicians simply don’t like the initiative process because it threatens their hold on power. The last thing they want is for you, the voter, to have a say in how their government is run.