A different kind of vote suppression
by digby
Ballot referendums in California are almost unintelligible these days due to the fact that big money groups step in to oppose legitimate populist initiatives with propagandistic mumbo-jumbo and TV ads that distort the process. It’s a problem. What is meant to be direct democracy has turned into a mind game.
For years Republicans, allied with big money, have benefitted from this system. But now that Democrats are having some success in getting past their propaganda, they want to shut it down:
In November, 64 percent of Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment allowing former felons to regain their right to vote. Three weeks later, a Republican state representative introduced legislation that would require constitutional amendments to earn 67 percent of the vote to pass.
In Missouri, voters passed measures to raise the minimum wage, legalize medical marijuana and take legislative redistricting out of the hands of legislators. A month later, state House Republicans introduced a bill to nearly double the number of signatures needed to qualify an initiative for the ballot.
In Idaho, 60 percent of voters approved an initiative to expand Medicaid to cover low-income residents. Last week, a Republican state senator introduced legislation to increase both the number and geographic spread of signatures required to qualify an initiative.
Republican legislators in states across the country have introduced dozens of bills that would make significant changes to the initiative and referendum process, tightening rules and raising requirements after their voters approved progressive proposals that legislators opposed or refused to take up.
Critics of the proposals say they are a Republican end run around the direct democracy process, meant to stifle popular progressive policies before they get to the ballot.
“This is, combined with what we saw after the success of many of these ballot initiatives in 2018, state legislatures undermining the will of the people,” said Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, who runs the progressive Ballot Initiative Strategy Center. “Rather than listen to the will of the people, elected officials are undermining the will of the people.”
Conservative groups such as the Republican State Leadership Committee and the American Legislative Exchange Council have advocated for tightening ballot rules.
And some Democrats have supported similar measures in states such as Oregon and Washington, where low signature requirements have led to crowded ballots.
Fields said her group was watching about 90 bills around the country that would tighten ballot access.
The nonpartisan political website Ballotpedia is tracking about 140 pieces of legislation introduced in 31 states related to ballot measures, though some of those bills would loosen requirements.
Some of the Republicans behind this year’s bills say they are necessary to curb the influence of big-money groups that increasingly fund some of the most expensive ballot measure campaigns across the country.
In Arizona, voters rejected an initiative that would have required the state to generate 50 percent of its energy from renewable sources, which made the ballot with the help of millions of dollars from California billionaire Tom Steyer.
After that measure, state Sen. Vince Leach (R) introduced a bill regulating who could collect signatures for a ballot initiative and giving counties more time to inspect signatures once they have been turned in.
“It’s pretty clear to see that over the last six years, we’ve had any number of initiatives that have started from outside of the state of Arizona,” Leach said in an interview. “We need to protect one of the most precious things we have, and that’s the ability to go to the ballot and vote.”
These people are terrified of democracy and for good reason. They’ve made themselves so hateful that it’s getting harder and harder to form a majority even on issues much less on candidates. So rather than living with the rules as they are written they are changing them, once again, to advantage themselves at the expense of the majority.
They will continue, of course, to project this manipulation of the system on to the other side with their bogus cries of “voter fraud” and “rigging the election.” That’s the new normal.
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