Citizens in Charge

Last week several members of the Citizens in Charge Foundation traveled to the CATO Institute to attend Not Invited to the Party: How the Demopublicans Have Rigged the System and Left Independents Out in the Cold. The program included three speakers discussing the impediments that outsiders face in the American electoral system. You can watch the video below.

 

Back in August Illinois Governor Pat Quinn issed and “amendatory veto” to House Bill 723, the “Protect Incumbents Act”. The bill deals with blocking minor political parties ability to put candidates on the ballot through a party meeting that occurrs after the primary election.

We’ve previously blogged about the battle in Washington state over whether or not the state government should release the personal information of petition signers to the public. The fight continues.

Yesterday, a state superior judge in Washington ordered Secretary of State Sam Reed to keep the petition signer information private.  This move essentially blocks the Secretary of State from releasing the names until the federal case is resolved in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

A new poll released today in California shows voter opinion on a constitutional convention, Proposition 13, ballot initiatives, and various other issues.

A majority (51%) of Californians think that the state constitution needs to be changed.  The voters don’t however support any changes to Proposition 13, 69% say it shouldn’t be amended.

You can read the rest of the survey results here.

At a time when Californians’ ballot initiative & referendum rights have been under sustained attack, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed three bills that he believes would harm grassroots petitioning efforts.

Nevada is one of the the 26 states in the US that has some form of statewide initiative & referendum rights.  The process in the state has been used for many different issues over the years.  To read more about the process in Nevada you can check it out here.

The California Independent Voter Network is a non-profit group dedicated to engaging non-partisan voters in the political process.  The group also works on public policy and stimulating public dialogue.

The island paradise of Hawaii may have beautiful sandy beaches and clear blue water, but it does not have initiative and referendum rights.  Check out a brief history of I&R in Hawaii here.

Oftentimes state governments are not fond of the initiative and referendum process.  The state of Oregon is no exception, and they recently hired investigators to try and find fraud and wrong-doing amongst petitioners gathering signatures to block a recent tax increase.

Paul Jacob’s recent Common Sense article talks about the investigations and what they discovered.  You can check out the article here.

As the attacks continue against California’s ballot initiative process, three scholars at the Reason Foundation are injecting some, well, reason into the debate.

Frederick County officials are calling on residents to sign a petition to hold a referendum on the city of Frederick’s plans to annex three neighborhoods. The county has set up a website listing petition locations and urging people to sign, while developers have paid city officials to send a letter to all registered city voters urging them not to sign.

The Tea Party protests against the growth of government and its ever-increasing power would be well served by the initiative and referendum process, according to a new article today at Big Government. No other process gives citizens such control over their government.

Big Government is a new website launched by Andrew Breitbart.

Last week I discussed a California Assembly bill that was aimed at preventing something that never occurs. Assembly Bill 1068 would ban the writing of contracts that require an initiative to qualify for the ballot before the company that collected the signatures gets paid. As I indicated in my earlier post, such contracts are simply not used in the industry.

On October 13th, the CATO Institute will host a forum featuring former campaign manager for the 2000 Ralph Nader for President campaign and author, Theresa Amato, and author and professor James T. Bennett.

They will be disussing ballot access for third-party and Independent candidates and how the system is setup to keep them out.

Part II of our “What’s on the Ballot in 2009” video with Paul Jacob is up on our Youtube page.  This video discusses what is on the ballot in Ohio and Washington.  You can check out the video here.