Citizens in Charge

Citizens around the country are clamoring for more of a voice in their government. They are tired of being dictated to from Washington, DC and state capitols around the country. Populist sentiment is building, and one state that illustrates that quite well is Connecticut. John Woodcock III is the chairman of the Connecticut Citizens for Ballot Initiative, a group that is pushing to bring initiative & referendum rights to the citizens of Connecticut. He had this to say in an opinion piece in The Norwich Bulletin:

In November 2008, close to 580,000 Connecticut voters said “Yes” to a constitutional convention. It was a David vs. Goliath campaign as reflected by the “Yes” vote being outspent $83 to every $1, a campaign that was ultimately lost.

The engine driving that vote in favor of this historic convention was initiative petition, as reflected by a Hartford Courant-UConn poll showing Connecticut citizens favoring ballot initiative by 65 percent to 30 percent opposed, and 5 percent undecided.

Announcing the poll results, it was reported that “the poll found a correlation between a poor opinion of the General Assembly and support for the ability of citizens to legislate by petition and referendum.”

But the General Assembly has ignored this strong expression of public support for initiative petition.

Citizens in every state deserve the right to petition their government. Hopefully citizens in other states without initiative & referendum can work together to pressure their state government into adopting the process.