Newswire
Former NBA star Tim Hardaway will be one of the first to sign an initiative petition to place an equal marriage constitutional amendment on the Florida ballot next year.
Hardaway’s petition signing will be open to the news media.
Read More: here
Organizers of an effort to repeal a tax cut for oil companies expect to collect enough signatures before Saturday’s deadline to put a referendum before voters.
Pat Lavin, a leader of “Vote Yes - Repeal the Giveaway, estimates his group has collected 35,000 signatures and will get more before the deadline, the Anchorage Daily News reported (http://bit.ly/12oPRPL ).
“We’re feeling very good about where we are, numbers-wise,” he said.
Read More: here
El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Wayne Williams filed court papers in Denver on Thursday to demand a date for the election that could recall Colorado Springs Democratic state Sen. John Morse.
Legal wrangling has tied up the effort to recall Morse, who was targeted over his stance on gun control measures that passed the General Assembly this year. A protest of the recall effort was filed by Catherine Kleinsmith of Colorado Springs, who claims the recall petitions used in the campaign to oust Morse don’t meet constitutional muster.
The protest was denied by the secretary of state’s office then appealed to Denver District Court.
A majority of Americans back three political reform ideas, including 68% who favor national referenda on key issues if enough voters sign a petition to request a popular vote on the issue. Roughly six in 10 favor a shortened presidential campaign lasting five weeks in the fall of an election year and a nationwide primary election to select each party’s candidates for president.
State labor unions are once again trying to twist California’s century-old initiative process to work in their favor by going after paid signature collectors.
They’re backing AB 857, which would require at least 20 percent of signatures needed to qualify an initiative for the state ballot to be collected by unpaid individuals. Professional petition firms must register with the secretary of state and comply with all sorts of new regulations, while their petitions must be of a different color and carry a disclaimer.
Read More: here
DIRECT democracy is often blamed for making California ungovernable. The state keeps holding ballot initiatives (ie, what non-Americans call referendums). Voters decide that taxes must fall but spending must rise. Elected politicians struggle to make the sums add up. But last week this dysfunctional system was sideswiped. The Supreme Court, in upholding the right of gays to marry in California, may have weakened direct democracy throughout America, some fear.
Looks like voters will get to decide whether the city should scrap its current pension program.
Political consultant Pete Zimmerman emailed The Range today to inform us that the Committee for Sustained Retirement Benefits has turned in more than 23,000 signatures to put the Sustainable Retirement Benefits Act on the November city ballot. The group needed 12,730 valid signatures, so there’s lots of padding there to fight off legal challenges.
The initiative would force the city to scrap the current pension program for new hires and instead enroll them in a program similar to a 401K system.
A controversial bill aimed at toughening rules for petition signature operations in Oregon passed the House Friday on a 35-22 vote.
The largely party-line vote came after several Republican and minor-party activists complained that Senate Bill 154 could “criminalize” inadvertent errors and discourage people from mounting ballot measure campaigns in Oregon.
Those concerns were dismissed by the bill’s Democratic supporters, who used their majority in the House to win final legislative approval and send the measure to Gov. John Kitzhaber for his signature.
The lawyer for Democratic Colorado Senate President John Morse made his first public case Thursday for tossing all 10,000-plus signatures certified as valid for triggering a recall election against the pol.
Mark Grueskin, an attorney representing a constituent who brought the complaint against the recall effort, said the petitions should be deemed invalid because they didn’t contain language specifying that there would be an election to replace Morse if he’s recalled.
More and more, it seems, frustrated voters are seized with the impulse to punish their elected officials. Perhaps that’s not all that surprising, given some of the disclosures about politicians these days, but this urge can be taken too far.
For example, we’ve always believed term-limits laws, which aim to put elected officials on the clock, regardless of whether or not they’re doing a good job, are overkill. Why should honorable, effective representatives be turned out of office long before they’re ready to retire simply because their arbitrarily designated time has expired?
Most of them only go on to seek election to other offices anyway, so the quest to purge government of those dreaded “career politicians” usually backfires.