New Hampshire
Both the town and school district warrant articles seeking the adoption of RSA 40:13, the Official Ballot Act, failed to receive support from voters during Tuesday’s election. By a vote of 456-696, the warrant article seeking to change to official ballot voting, commonly referred to as SB2, was defeated for the town.
Of the 45 states whose legislatures hold sessions in 2010, 27 of them have adjourned for the year, and 5 more will wrap up before the end of the month. Of the more than 80 bills dealing with the initiative and referendum process in various states, 51 of them would have reduced citizens’ initiative rights. Thanks to the work of activists in our coalitions, only 3 bills reducing citizen’s rights have passed and become law.
A petition asking the Legislature for a referendum to define “marriage” in the state Constitution is headed for the Town Meeting ballot after a special hearing of the Town Council on Feb. 4 that lasted barely five minutes. A law making same-sex marriage legal was passed by the Legislature and governor last year and went into effect Jan. 1.
A recommendation by the legal firm that represents the city likely will determine whether a tax cap question appears on the ballot this year or next. Real Roseberry, 78, a lifelong city resident, recently gathered more than three times the required signatures for a tax cap petition. But some councilors have doubts about the cap’s legality, citing a March ruling by a Merrimack County Superior Court judge that a proposed cap in Concord was unconstitutional because it violated the City Manager-City Council form of government. Somersworth has the same structure.
Voters in both Kittery and Eliot head to the polls today in municipal elections that include far-reaching measures in those towns.
“This isn’t so much about allowing a tax cap; this is a voting rights issue,” said Matt Murphy, director of the New Hampshire Advantage Coalition. “Whether people in communities should be able to amend their charter through citizens’ initiatives and be able to vote on those amendments.”
You have no statewide Initiative & Referendum rights.
Poll:
See the results of a poll on support for statewide initiative & referendum here.
Grade: D
Click here to view New Hampshire’s individual report in Of the People, By the People, For the People: A 2010 Report Card on Statewide Voter Initiative Rights.
Initiative and referendum advocates were defeated at New
Hampshire’s 1902 constitutional convention by an overwhelming 250 to 40
vote of the delegates. George H. Duncan of East Joffrey, secretary of the
New Hampshire Direct Legislation League in 1912, led an effort to pass I&R
at the next state constitutional convention, but lost again by a vote of 166
to 156. Duncan attributed the defeat to the fact that “officials of the
Concord and Montreal Railroad, a subsidiary of the Boston and Maine
[Railroad], were using railroad money to defeat us.”
[Art.] l00. [Alternate Methods of Proposing Amendments.] Amendments to
this constitution may be proposed by the general court or by a
constitutional convention selected as herein provided.
(a) The senate and house of representatives, voting separately, may
propose amendments by a three-fifths vote of the entire membership of
each house at any session.
A South Dakota House committee has endorsed a measure intended to make more organizations report where they get the money they use to influence the outcome of public votes on ballot measures.
The State Affairs Committee voted unanimously to approve HB1233, which says any organization that spends more than half its annual revenue to influence a ballot measure must file a campaign finance report disclosing where it got the money…. (READ MORE)