Citizens in Charge

The recall battle lives on in Wisconsin this week as state Democrats file a fourth recall effort against Republican state senators.

Not to be outdone, Republicans also filed another two recall petitions of their own today, against Democratic State Senator Jim Holperin, and Senator Robert Hansen.

The next few months are sure to be interesting in Wisconsin politics. If all of the various recall efforts on both sides come to fruition the political landscape in the state could be drastically different by this time next year.

Today is Citizens in Charge Executive Director Amanda Roman’s birthday, and we’d like to wish her a happy birthday on behalf of all the staff.

Have a great birthday Amanda!

(OMAHA, NE) – Tomorrow, Citizens in Charge, a national voter rights group focused on the ballot initiative and referendum process, will hold a news conference to discuss the progress of Citizens in Charge v. Gale, a case that will be heard by Chief Judge Joseph F. Bataillon in U.S. District Court at 9:00 am the same day. The lawsuit seeks to reverse three restrictions placed on the citizen initiative process in the state.

On Saturday, Citizens in Charge President Paul Jacob’s op-ed on recall fever ran in the Washington Examiner:

A letter sent Wednesday to members of the Oklahoma House of Representatives by Citizens in Charge President Paul Jacob shows increasing criticism of a plan by some Oklahoma legislators to make state petition proponents gather signatures based on congressional districts instead of statewide.

Patrick B. McGuigan of CapitolBeatOK reports:

Some commentary from the Kansas City Business Journal on the Voter Protection Alliance and the constitutional amendment they proposed yesterday:

Today in Missouri, the Voter Protection Alliance filed a constitutional amendment with the state that will better protect initiatives approved at the ballot box by voters. Citizens in Charge, along with the Humane Society and numerous other political groups, signed on to endorse this change to the state’s constitution. From the group’s press release:

Oklahoma already has one of the nation’s toughest petition processes: state lawmakers have suceeeded in making the process so hard that few citizen initiatives ever make the ballot. One citizen initiative, State Question 744 from the 2010 ballot, apparently has the legislature running scared.

Recall Fever is sweeping the nation, Paul Jacob explains in today’s edition of Common Sense:

Voters across the country do not like red-light cameras. At all. In Mukilteo, WA voters voiced their disapproval for the cameras overwhelmingly, and it seems to have swayed the city council into eventually listening:

An editorial in the Boston Globe wonders if it’s too easy for citizen initiatives to make it onto the ballot in Massachusetts. Lawmakers in the state are trying to raise the number of signatures needed by citizens:

Tensions are still high in Wisconsin over Governor Scott Walker’s budget reform bill. Recall efforts against both Republicans and Democrats are in full swing.

The group running the campaign to recall Democrat Senator Robert Wirch says they have collected enough signatures to get it onto the ballot. Senator Wirch was one of the 14 Democrat state senators who fled the state during the budget battle earlier this year.

Citizens in Charge President Paul Jacob submitted the letter below today to Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler. Secretary Gessler set a hearing for today on using his rulemaking authority to clean up part of a 2009 law that places petition proponents in danger of personal legal attacks. The rule change comes as the result of a broad-based effort led by Citizens in Charge to get the Secretary to weigh in.

The three-year-old saga of Maryland’s draconian requirement that petition signatures match exactly the signature on a voter’s registration card is not closer to resolution. An appeal to the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals was denied Monday. The federal court decided to punt, saying there are no federal issues and sending the matter back once again to state court.

As we mentioned last week on our website and on this blog, Utah’s Governor recently signed a bill that outlaws using electronically collected signatures in a petition campaign.

Utah State University students were also upset at the governor for signing the bill into law, but for slightly different reasons than we here at Citizens in Charge were: