petitioning
Last week, as I was writing about some of the ways the peoples’ voice is silenced, the St. Louis, Missouri police were busy silencing Gustavo Rendon by taking away his first amendment right to free speech.
Never short on examples of the many attempts around the country to take away the 
peoples’ right to initiative and referendum by gutting the process, Norfolk, VA residents narrowly escaped a doubling of the signature requirement to put measures on the city ballot Wednesday. Thanks to the strong opposition shown by tho
Last month, Ohio state representative Jennifer Garrison announced a plan for what she inappropriately refers to as a “Ballot Integrity Act”. The proposal would require people who help initiative and referendum campaigns collect signatures, and the companies they work for, to go through an onerous and potentially expensive registration process before they could work on a petition campaign.The law would also allow voters’ signatures to be thrown out because of mistakes made by campaign workers.
The Portland Press Herald has this brief news story today about the legal challenge to 
Maine’s Secretary of State over certifying petition signatures.
As the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether signatures on the Referendum-71 petition in Washington state should be made public, a public opinion battle is heating up. Compelling arguments are surfacing on both sides of the issue, with each side calling on the High Court to rule in their favor.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has struck down a Seattle law that prohibits engaging in speech, including petitioning, near a “captive audience”. The ban governed activity in the Seattle Center, the area near the Space Needle.
Here at Citizens in Charge Foundation when we talk about petitioning, we usually refer to the formal petitioning done in the 24 states that have ballot initiative and referendum rights. This type of petitioning is great, and people in those states are more empowered to control government than in other states. But petitioning is really about people coming together to express their concerns - and show their numbers - on specific issues.
A U.S. District court judge has ruled that the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources can’t prevent citizens from circulating petitions in state parks. While West Virginian does not give its people access to the ballot initiative and referendum process, candidates for office have to collect signatures on nominating petitions.