Paul Jacob

Citizens in Charge Foundation -- led by Paul Jacob, best known as leader of the term limits movement and as a member of the now free Oklahoma 3 -- is building what, in my experience, appears to be the first truly national organizing network around initiative and referendum.

In an email, Citizens in Charge says it now has 13 "Citizen State Coordinators" (the goal is to have someone in every state) to work to defend and expand initiative and referendum rights in the states. More about this here. Whatever you think of Jacob's politics, this is a smart move  that will encourage more thinking about direct democracy and, one hopes, more civic engagement.

For those interested in direct democracy, today's personnel move by California Republican gubernatorial contender Steve Poizner, the state's insurance commissioner, is worth noting. He's hired Bettina Inclan as his campaign press secretary.

Inclan comes to the campaign from Citizens in Charge, the non-profit run by Paul Jacob and dedicated to protecting the initiative and referendum. There's reason to believe that protecting initiative rights could be a part of Poizner's campaign. Poizner seized on a remark two months ago made by his rival Meg Whitman, the former eBay chief, in which she suggested the proposition process had outlived its usefulness. And the process is likely to come under scrutiny next year as various good government groups attempt reforms of California's governing system. Hiring Inclan gives the campaign someone who knows these issues intimately.

Paul Jacob, the term limits advocate, emails and says that Citizens In Charge, his organization to advocate for the initiative process and the rights of people to petition their government, is growing. A year in, the group -- which is really two groups (one a 501 c 3, the other a different kind of non-profit, a c4) -- has six employees and is working on several fronts, including making it easier to qualify measures for the ballot in Oklahoma. If he's successful in opening up the process in Oklahoma (where the attorney general unsuccessfully attempted to prosecute Jacob for ballot initiative work), it would be especially sweet. The state is probably the hardest place in America to qualify an initiative, because of government hostility and a tight, 90-day time limit on signature gathering.

The most prominent member of the Oklahoma Three, now freed, speaks out on the experience of being charged for the crime of trying to qualify an initiative for the ballot. Via This Is Common Sense.

Big news in the direct democracy world. Oklahoma's attorney general, who had brought a dubious prosecution of term limits advocate and two professionals -- the "Oklahoma 3" in initiative land -- for conspiracy to violate the state's law against out-of-state petition gatherers, announced today that he will drop the charges, the Associated Press reports. The decision comes after a federal appeals court struck down the law that the three were accused of violating.

The attorney general, Drew Edmondson, also declared he wouldn't appeal the court decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. That's wise. The state almost certainly would have lost. Attempts to regulate signature gathering typically run afoul of First Amendment protections of political speech. And the Oklahoma law was especially wrong-headed; it made illegal what is standard practice in American initiative politics: the gathering of signatures by traveling circulators. The real question is why Edmondson persisted for so long -- it's been more than a year -- in pursuing the charges. Conservatives saw political bias. (Edmondson's a Democrat). Liberals unwisely exulted over the prosecution, despite the threat to free speech it represented. If they have any honor, the New York Times and the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center owe Jacob and his fellow defendants an apology.

After multiple delays, a hearing was held Nov. 18 to decide whether U.S. Term Limits founder Paul Jacob and two veteran political pros who were helping him qualify an initiative in Oklahoma, Susan Johnson and Rick Carpenter, should stand trial on charges that they conspired to bring out-of-state signature gatherers to the state. But the hearing didn't conclude. It has been postponed until early 2009.

The case is based on a law barring out of state signature gatherers. The law is almost certainly unconstitutional, and it's likely a matter of time before charges against the three -- dubbed the Oklahoma 3 by their supporters -- are dropped. More here.

The folks at Free Paul Jacob and some Oklahoma reporters are suspicious about the reasons for the removal of a conservative judge Bill Graves from the so-called "Oklahoma 3" case, the ongoing criminal proescution of Term Limits advocate Paul Jacob and two other people involved in collecting signatures on ballot initiatives in that state. The Free Paul Jacob blog thinks this may have something to do with Paul Jacob. But it's not clear that's the case. Graves had some 2,400 of his criminal cases reassigned. News reports suggest that there may be political reasons for the overall reassignments--specifically Graves' denouncing of new rules on judges as part of a "homosexual agenda." Interesting times in the Oklahoma courts.

The leader of the term limits movement and two other organizers of a petition drive in Oklahoma are under state indictment there on charges they broke laws related to out of state signature gathering. The indictment lookis like an over-the-top attempt by state attorney general Drew Edmondson to criminalize signature gathering in a state that is already the most difficult state to qualify an initiative in. Oklahoma has the shortest time period for gathering signatures -- 90 days -- which in and of itself puts the lie to claims by officials there that they want to make signature gathering a grass roots process. With such a short time period, paid petition circulators are the only way to qualify a measure; no grass roots operation can gather enough signatures that fast. (This is a point that Bob Stern makes in his excellent new report on the initiaitve process in California; he argues that time period be extended in the Golden State, from 150 days to a year, to permit grass roots groups to gather signatures).