Citizens in Charge

After passing the Senate with bipartisan opposition and only Republican support, Senate Bill 1108 passed the House State Affairs Committee in similar fashion and could soon hit the House floor.

In hearings, testimony has been bipartisan and overwhelmingly against Idaho’s SB 1108, a bill that makes qualifying an initiative or referendum much more difficult.  In addition to an already very onerous statewide signature requirement, SB 1108 would add a severe new condition that petitions also contain 6% of registered voters in at least 18 legislative districts. Adding 18 new petition drives to qualify a ballot measure would dramatically drive up costs.

Testimony so far this morning on SB 1108, the Senate-passed bill to make it tougher to qualify an initiative or referendum measure for the Idaho ballot, has been almost all against the bill. Anne Nesse of Coeur d’Alene brought a petition against the bill that she said has 580 signatures collected online from all over the state, both from rural and urban areas, and is getting 100 more signatures a day. “I have met personally with Kootenai County Republicans, who were appalled, frankly,” she said. “They were practically hugging me when I left, and I’m a Democrat.” She told the committee, “I would guess that you should check with your constituency on this.”

This morning I testified at the California state capitol before the Public Safety Committee against SB 168 a bill aimed at banning payment per signature for petition circulators. Here is a clip about how the hearing went from the capitol grounds. 

Today, long time ballot initiative rights activist””and Citizens in Charge Foundation Maine Citizen State Coordinator””Mary Adams informed the Maine Legislature’s Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee of the harm posed to the citizen initiative process by a series of bills.