This Site Has Moved
The posts found here are still available for archival purposes and to avoid broken links, but comments are now turned off and there will be no future updates. For all the latest from New America, please go to www.NewAmerica.net
About this Blog
Direct democracy -- the Switzerland-inspired system of initiatives, referenda and recalls that allows voters to make and repeal laws in 24 states -- is poorly understood. It isn’t even very direct. Direct democracy has become blockbuster democracy: a half-billion-dollar international industry of signature gatherers, consultants, and election lawyers who use ballot measures less as a method of making law and more as a tool of mega-communications to boost some politicians, hurt others, and supplement lobbying campaigns.
Blockbuster democracy is a decentralized business that practices wide-open politics. This blog aims to provide a center of news, analysis and conversation for and about the industry. We will report from blockbuster democracy’s capital -- California -- but we’ll monitor ballot measures from across the country and around the globe.
Your Blogger: Joe Mathews is an
User login
Momentum for Initiative Reform in Arizona
Both the outgoing governor, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary-nominee Janet Napolitano, and her successor, Jan Brewer, have called for major reform of the state's initiative process. So has the Arizona Republic, in this recent editorial. It's hard to blame them. Arizona saw perhaps unprecedented signature fraud last year. A typical validity rate for signatures collected in an initiative campaign is 70 percent. But multiple measures last year had validity rates of less than 50 percent. That's strong evidence of institutional, across-the-board fraud.
- Login to post comments
Reform AZ the right way.
Reform is needed. Stop transcribing. Become first state that has receipt process for initiatives. A tear off receipt or carbon. Make circulators register with state. Make circulators get badges. Stop coordinators from handing out petitions. Require circulators to pick up petitions from local voter boards. Require batch numbers on petitions and who signed off on these petitions. Prosecute lawbreakers. Without prosecution, the fraud runs without end. There is no fear.
The process should be in the best interest of the voters and democracy. Other measures that have been tried consistently get thrown out because they are unconstitutional. Pay by hour is discriminatory. Banning out of state circulators violates First Amendment to speech. Banning out of state circulators would have the same effect of banning lobbyists from other states. Lobbyists come from out of state and influence legislators to change law.
Politicians by nature don't like initiative process because it undermines the process. Let us hope this isn't a prelude to dismantle the initiative process by calling it reform.