Citizens in Charge

In April of 2008 Paul Jacob appeared on the Rob Schilling radio show, based out of Charlottesville, Virginia.  Paul discussed the ballot initiative process and his persecution in the state of Oklahoma. You can check the video out on our Youtube page here.

A lawsuit filed Tuesday to knock a people’s veto referendum off of the June 2010 ballot relies on a complete misunderstanding of settled petition law. According to the Portland Press Herald:

“John Paterson of Bernstein Shur in Portland, the attorney representing Johnson, said a review shows Dunlap should have thrown out “an extensive number” of other signatures, including entire pages circulated by people who were not registered Maine voters.”

While state legislators and special interests continue to call for restrictions on what they call a flawed citizen initiative system, yet another report has come out indicating that California’s budget woes are the fault of the legislature, not the voters and the initiative process. The nonpartisan Center for Governmental Studies has found in a preliminary report that legislators outspend the public at the ballot box nearly four-to-one!

Paul Jacob discusses the importance of the initiative and referendum process for all citizens, and for all different types of policies and beliefs.

Paul is interviewed by CPAC 2009.

 

 

There’s a new video posted on the Citizens in Charge Foundation website and Youtube channel. Grassroots Director Brandon Holmes and I metup with some of the members of the Howard County Citizens for Open Government last Friday for their appeal hearing, and talked with them over lunch afterwards. Here’s what they had to say regarding their case.

Last Friday, Citizens in Charge Foundation staff headed up to Howard County, Maryland to observe the appeals hearing regarding the rejected petition signatures at the circuit court. We previously blogged about this case here.

Here’s an interview Citizens in Charge Foundation President Paul Jacob did earlier this year while he was out in Colorado. He was a guest on the Independent Thinking show hosted by Jon Caldara of the Independence Institute, a free maket think tank based in Colorado.

Today, in a Sacramento news conference, Citizens in Charge Foundation, the only national voter rights groups dedicated to protecting and expanding the ballot initiative process, presented California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger with the November 2009 John Lilburne Award.  Governor Schwarzenegger was honored for vetoing four bills passed by the California Legislature during the 2009 session that would have restricted the initiative process in the state.

Citizens in Charge Foundation President Paul Jacob will be in Sacramento, CA tomorrow morning to hold a press conference honoring Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger with this month’s John Lilburne Award. Governor Schwarzenegger is receiving the award for recently vetoing four bills that would have restricted the initiative process in the state.

I am writing to provide an update on the CB58-2008 referendum petition drive that started last November after the Howard County Maryland Council approved a 300% zoning increase for the size of grocery stores in Turf Valley.You may recall that citizens gathered over 9,300 signatures to place this legislation on the ballot for voters to decide in the 2010 election.

Here’s a link to a video we made earlier this year.  With this year’s election season over and looking towards defending and expanding the initiative process in 2010 the video is a timely reminder. The ability of citizens to petition their government is a fundamentally important right.

At the recent 2009 State Policy Network Conference, Citizens in Charge Foundation president Paul Jacob gave a presentation on fighting back against political attacks and frivolous prosecution.  His talk focused on his indictment in Oklahoma last year over signature gathering procedures. The main message however, was that when you are under attack politically, tell your story, respond quickly to further attacks and go on offense.

The results are in from the numerous ballot measures that were voted on yesterday.  It looks like about half passed and half did not. Next year should be quite a bit bigger in terms of the number of citizen-initiatives on the ballot.  You can check out the results here.

After today the 2009 ballot season will essentially be over.  There relatively few citizen-led measures on the ballot around the country this year, mostly due to the fact that only 3 states allow them. 2010 will be a different story however, it will be a much busier election season.

It’s election day today in many states around the country. Even though it’s technically an off-election year there are still many initiatives and referenda on ballots in many states. Make sure to get out and vote today on the ballot measures in your state. Here’s Ballotpedia.org’s list of state-wide ballot measures being voted on today.