Citizens in Charge

It appears opponents of the city of Sacramento’s subsidy to bring a new arena to downtown are a step closer to having voters decide.

The petition backed by the Sacramento Taxpayers Opposed to Pork, STOP, needed 22,000 valid signatures go get on the June ballot. According to the Sacramento County Voter Registrar’s Office, 22,498 signatures of the 34,532 submitted were validated, that’s 65.2 percent.

State lawmakers are moving to repeal major changes in voting laws made last year — and then reenacting at least some of them in a way to thwart a referendum drive.

The proposal from Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, R-Gilbert, comes after foes of those changes gathered enough signatures to put the measure on hold. And it will remain there until November when voters get to decide if they approve of what lawmakers have done.

HB 2196 would repeal the law, making the November vote unnecessary.

Read More: here

A man is facing charges of forging signatures on petitions asking for the recall of Colorado Sen. John Morse.

The District Attorney’s Office said Thursday an arrest warrant has been issued for Nickolas Robinson. He’s accused of forging at least 13 signatures on recall petitions. Robinson could not be located for comment on Friday.

According to KKTV-TV (http://tinyurl.com/o3pybso), the warrant alleges that Robinson committed 13 counts of forgery, seven counts of perjury and 13 counts of attempt to influence a public servant last May.

Read More: here

More than 35,000 people willingly signed on to an effort by STOP to put city plans for a new Kings arena to a public vote but now, almost a month since those names were turned in to the city clerk, pro-arena groups are taking issue with what version of the petition voters signed.

“Voters are not getting the same pieces of information,” Chris Lehane, consultant with The4000, said Monday. ”Some dates are all over the place. Others don’t include consistent language in the notice of intent.  That’s the reason why they’re pursuing this.”

With a letter hand-delivered to the county registrar late Friday, The4000 is claiming that there are at least five versions of the petition circulated by STOP.

The path to a new downtown arena isn’t set in stone yet, with one of the biggest obstacles remaining being a campaign to put the arena on the ballot.  That campaign is being pushed by Sacramento Taxpayers Opposed to Pork, otherwise known as STOP.

STOP submitted about 35,000 signatures to the county a couple weeks ago for validation and they need about 22,000 to get the measure approved.

However, new reports have surfaced today that indicate those signatures may be invalid.

Read More: here

Sheer math suggests the number of signatures submitted for a 2014 ballot measure on the Sacramento Kings arena may have a narrow margin to succeed.

According to the city clerk’s office Friday, there were more than 34,000 signatures in support of the measure submitted to the Sacramento County registrar’s office, along with more than 15,000 signature withdrawal forms. Typically, not all signatures submitted hold up as valid; some people who signed either won’t be registered voters, or won’t be registered in the city of Sacramento. Some duplicates or signatures that can’t be verified because of illegibility are also possible.

A group wants Columbus residents to vote on whether the city should be paying for its professional hockey team’s home arena, and it has collected enough signatures to get the issue on the May ballot.

That means voters will be asked whether to end the city’s purchase contract for Nationwide Arena, home of the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Read More: here

A lawsuit challenging the petition-gathering process that got a $950 million school-tax proposal on the November ballot was filed late Wednesday, according to a group opposing the measure.

The group, Coloradans for Real Education Reform, said Bob Hagedorn, a former Democratic state senator from Aurora, and Norma Anderson, a former Republican lawmaker from Lakewood, filed the suit in Denver District Court claiming that 39,555 of the signatures gathered for the ballot measure are invalid.

Read more:here

Officials with Anchorage municipal unions say they have turned in more than enough signatures to place a measure before voters that would repeal a law restricting union powers.

Unions turned in 22,136 voter signatures, more than triple the required 7,124 to place the measure on the ballot, the Anchorage Daily News reported Tuesday.

The Anchorage Assembly voted 6-5 on March 26 to approve what Mayor Dan Sullivan calls The Responsible Labor Act. The law prohibits union members from going on strike and eliminates binding arbitration.

Read More: here.

Looks like that momentous drive for a $15-an-hour minimum wage in the city of SeaTac has hit a great big pothole – and it’s a little hard to tell at this point whether a judge’s decision in King County Superior Court represents a jolt or a head-first slam into the concrete.

In the State of Washington, citizens can take two initiative routes to the ballot. The direct initiative is for putting measures directly to a public vote after submitting the required voter signatures and having those signatures verified.  There is also the indirect initiative, whereby after signature submission and verification, the initiative instead goes to the Washington Legislature. The legislature can then (a) adopt the measure “as is,” (b) place the measure “as is” on the ballot in addition to an alternative measure drawn up by legislators, thus letting the voters decide which they prefer, or (c) do nothing and let the initiative go directly on the ballot for a vote.

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

A second state lawmaker is staring down the barrel of a recall election after proponents turned in about 2,300 more signatures than needed to oust Democratic Sen. Angela Giron of Pueblo over her support for gun control.

Whether the trigger is pulled on the recall election depends on if the secretary of state’s office validates the 13,570 signatures submitted by proponents on Monday. They need 11,285 valid signatures, which represents 25 percent of the votes cast for Giron’s seat in 2010. The secretary’s office has 15 days to validate. There is then a 15-day appeal period and stakeholders can also petition the courts.

Targeted Senate President Appears Vulnerable

Pro-Second Amendment activists in Colorado recently turned in 16,199 signatures in an effort to recall State Senate President John Morse, who helped pass three gun control bills earlier this year. Of that total, only 7,178 valid signatures are required to force a recall election.

Due to the narrow margin of Sen. Morse’s election victory in 2010 – he won by less than 350 votes and only 48 percent of the total – backers of Morse recognize he may have a difficult time winning a recall election.

Referendum returned to Maryland last November in the form of three ballot questions seeking to do away with recently passed laws in the Old Line State.  The efforts came to naught as the ballot questions failed, but the three questions were unique in the fact that in the last 20 years only one previous referendum had graced the ballot in Maryland.

Past petition drives had tried and failed to make the ballot, but a new online petitioning website MDPetitions.com, sponsored by Maryland Delegate Neil Parrott, made it easier for citizens to refer laws in the state by petition.