Newswire
One of the ballot measures voters will decide this year is I-517: Concerning initiative and referendum measures. The proposal is an initiative to the Legislature but lawmakers did not approve it meaning it will be placed before voters to pass final judgment.
According to the ballot title for I-517:
“This measure would set penalties for interfering with or retaliating against signature-gatherers and petition-signers; require that all measures receiving sufficient signatures appear on the ballot; and extend time for gathering initiative petition signatures.”
Read more: here
A second Colorado senator faces a possible exodus from office from voters for her controversial stance on gun control.
The recall petition for Sen. Angela Giron’s was ratified on Monday, with about 1,400 valid signatures to spare.
After Giron’s support of various gun control initiatives in March, the grassroots organization Pueblo Freedom and Rights launched the recall measure against the District 3 Democrat.
As California’s supporters of same-sex marriage celebrated today’s Supreme Court ruling that overturned the state’s voter-approved ban on gay unions, the president of a conservative law firm lamented what he saw as a blow to the Golden State’s ballot measure process.
“The big issue, from our perspective, was the issue of the rights of the individual to petition their government through the initiative process,” said Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute.
Read More: here
From ancient Athens to the New England town meeting, direct democracy has long been celebrated at the local level. But the initiative, the most common form of direct democracy in the U.S., is most visible at the state level. Would it serve democracy if the initiative spread more to towns and cities?
Spokane County commissioners voted Friday to challenge a pair of Spokane city initiatives that could change the way business and government function locally.
They join a coalition of economic development interests in seeking judicial review on the legality of the two initiatives called a Community Bill of Rights and a Voter Bill of Rights.
Commissioners said they believe the two measures could significantly hamper economic development by putting more decision-making into the hands of individual citizens.
Envision Spokane and Spokane Moves to Amend the Constitution obtained sufficient voter signatures to force their bills of rights onto the city’s November ballot.
Facing a multimillion-dollar initiative campaign to expand background checks for gun sales, Second Amendment activists are responding with their own ballot measure.
A coalition of gun-rights groups on Wednesday unveiled Initiative 591, which would prevent Washington state from adopting background-check laws more restrictive than the federal standard.
Read More: here
Gov. Jan Brewer on Wednesday signed into law a controversial bill that will reshape the way Arizona runs its elections.
Her action angered Latinos and Democrats who say that, with one stroke of her pen, the Republican governor wiped out the goodwill of last week’s bipartisan accord on the state budget and Medicaid expansion by enshrining in law practices they view as voter suppression.
Matthew Benson, the governor’s spokesman, defended the legislation as “common sense.” He said concerns that the legislation will disenfranchise voters are overblown.
A recall petition against a Colorado lawmaker who supported gun rights was deemed sufficient Tuesday, setting up the first potential recall of a state lawmaker in Colorado history.
Lawyers for Senate President John Morse, D-Colorado Springs, are challenging the recall effort. They argued that the petition was improperly worded and therefore invalid.
Ballot propositions can be expensive fights, with hundreds of thousands ”” and even millions ”” of dollars spent. The Alaska Public Offices Commission, or APOC, is the group that tracks all that money. Yesterday, they ruled that groups can campaign for or against a pending referendum without declaring their expenditures, as long as they aren’t sponsoring it.
The differences between a referendum and an initiative are pretty technical. A referendum allows voters to strike down legislation, while an initiative allows them to draft their own policy. But in the end, they’re both items that appear on the ballot that allow citizens to shape the law themselves. And so, they were mostly treated the same under law.
So, it appears there will be no referendum on the city of Cincinnati’s parking lease agreement on the ballot this fall.
Unless, that is, in the unlikely event that the Ohio Supreme Court decides to take up the appeal of the decision made by the Ohio First District Court of Appeals this week saying the agreement is not subject to referendum because it was passed in March as an emergency ordinance.
But nobody on either side of this really expects this to happen.
The appeals court ruling came out Wednesday; and immediately some council members – five to be exact – signed a motion asking that the parking lease agreement, which would pump $92 million into city coffers and turn the parking system over to the Port Authority, be repealed.