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During this year’s legislative session, Missouri lawmakers rewrote a voter-passed law regulating dog breeders. They also tried to meet a demand of business groups to eliminate cost-of-living increases in the voter-approved state minimum wage. And since voters imposed strict campaign finance limits in 1994, lawmakers have twice acted to change those limits, including eliminating them entirely in 2006. The routine rewriting of voter initiatives would end if a new initiative makes the 2012 ballot and wins approval.
Sen. Joseph Robach, R-Greece, received the July 2011 John Lilburne Award for sponsoring legislation that would create a citizen initiative and referendum process in New York. The bill (S.709/A.4978) would give citizens the ability to propose and then vote on statutes and amendments to the state Constitution. As it stands, New Yorkers have no such power to enact or appeal laws, or amend the Constitution.
California legislators – who seem unable to come up with an honest balanced budget, who always pursue tax increases and who won’t pass even modest reforms to the state’s unfunded pension system or to anything else, for that matter – want to blame the government’s problems on voters, rather than themselves. Several bills, some of which are likely to pass, would gut the initiative and referendum process, or at least make that process far more burdensome. The ultimate goal: eliminating the main vehicle Californians have to reform a government that will not be reformed by elected officials, thus leaving us completely at the mercy of legislators and the liberal interest groups that control them.
As the CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, Wayne Pacelle, told us last week, his organization plans to back a constitutional amendment on the 2012 ballot in Missouri called Your Vote Counts. And Pacelle wasn’t kidding around. Campaign finance records show that the Humane Society has already channeled $64,957 in resources toward the Your Vote Counts campaign — making it the effort’s biggest donor to date.
Despite the Legislature’s failure to pass a bill this year to increase the percentage of votes needed to pass a voter initiated constitutional amendment, grassroots advocates recently voiced their opposition to the move they see as part of a trend by legislators to limit the power of the people.
An unlikely alliance of some of the state’s leading liberal and conservative voices are sounding the alarm that Colorado’s ballot initiative process is facing an unprecedented assault from established interests and lawmakers.
Democrats in the state Senate approved two bills Monday designed to shorten the reins on professional signature-gatherers who have come to dominate California’s initiative process. Under one bill, individuals would have to wear large-print badges specifying whether they are volunteers or are being paid to collect voter signatures.
A group suing over Nebraska laws governing the petition process said Thursday that it is forming a task force to gather residents’ input on the rules and make recommendations to the Legislature. Paul Jacob, president of Citizens in Charge Foundation Inc., said the state’s petition process has been stifled in the wake of changes made in 2007 and 2008. No one has attempted to put an initiative on the state ballot since those laws went into effect, he said.
A federal judge today heard opening arguments in a non-jury trial over Nebraska’s residency rule for petition circulators. The American Civil Liberties Union argues the law makes it difficult if not impossible for independent candidates and large-scale grassroots initiatives to get on the ballot. Under Nebraska law, petition circulators must live in the state whether they are volunteers or paid professionals. The ACLU is suing Nebraska Secretary John Gale.
A federal trial is scheduled to begin Thursday in a constitutional challenge to Nebraska laws governing petition signature requirements for ballot initiatives and independent candidates. The American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska said in the 2009 lawsuit that changes made in 2007 and 2008 to state law unfairly burdens independent candidates and residents trying to get initiatives on the ballot, thus violating protected political speech. It seeks to have those changes thrown out.