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bdh3
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Campaign finance reform?
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Apr 11 06:44 UTC 2002 |
Masquerade
"Citizen lawmaking has long been unpopular
with the political class. That's why many state
legislatures have made it difficult to get initiatives
on the ballot. But unions in Washington state are
going beyond even these crass tactics," John Fund
writes at the www.opinionjournal.com.
"The state labor council tried to cripple an
anti-tax initiative by encouraging its members to
masquerade as interested volunteers and request
stacks of blank petitions, clipboards and signs, all
in an effort to drain much-needed resources from
initiative supporters in the hopes of preventing
the collection of enough signatures to get on the
ballot," Mr. Fund said.
"The sabotage directed against Initiative 776,
which would roll back the car-licensing tax, began
with an e-mail to some 100 union leaders from
Diane McDaniel, political director of the
Washington State Labor Council. 'Your assistance
is needed to help slow down & stop the collection
of signatures for I-776, the Tim (Lieman) Eyman
creation that would further weaken our state's
transportation funding,' the e-mail began. It then
asked the union leaders to 'request that a Patriot
Packet (campaign kit) be mailed to you' and that
they 'forward this request to family members,
co-workers, etc. and ask them to do the same.'
"Ms. McDaniel wasn't shy in explaining her
motives. She said that, because the I-776 sponsors
lacked the financial means to hire a paid
signature-gathering firm, mailing 'hundreds (and
perhaps thousands) of packets out' will 'cost them
valuable campaign resources' and 'help use up
their supply of petitions.' She helpfully added:
'Don't use your union's mailing address. Too
many requests to send to union halls will tip our
hand.' Her closing included another appeal to
'help us slow down and kill I-776.'"
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| 6 responses total. |
other
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response 1 of 6:
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Apr 11 11:15 UTC 2002 |
Hmm. Is that a legal tactic? Sounds like it. Resourcefully
underhanded, though.
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jp2
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response 2 of 6:
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Apr 11 12:41 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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polygon
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response 3 of 6:
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Apr 11 13:12 UTC 2002 |
Another tactic which has been used effectively against petition drives
is to harass the petitioners. Engage them in argument wherever they
show up in public, and it becomes impossible for them to gather the
required number of signatures in the (often quite limited) time allowed.
As I recall, a Dearborn-area state legislator successfully foiled a recall
drive this way in the 1980s.
This can also happen "passively", with no organized campaign. If as
little as 5% of the population becomes argumentative when presented with a
particular petition, it will become nearly impossible to circulate it.
Completely apart from wasting time, such arguments are highly corrosive to
the morale of volunteers. Even paid circulators don't stand up to it.
The kind of individual who can blithely shrug it off is rare.
The majority of Michigan voters would vote to bring back the death
penalty. However, attempts to put it on the ballot have fallen far short,
because critics of the death penalty -- just ordinary passers-by of
locations where signature gathering was attempted -- make it too difficult
to gather enough signatures quickly.
The seeming exception to this is abortion. In 1988, both right-to-life
and pro-choice forces gathered enough signatures to put the issue of
Medicaid abortions to a statewide vote. However, in this case both camps
had protected environments (e.g., Catholic churches and NOW meetings),
where social pressures were strongly on their side, to circulate their
petition without stressful encounters with the "other side".
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gull
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response 4 of 6:
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Apr 11 18:29 UTC 2002 |
I'm not a big fan of the initiative process. It seems to result in a
lot of short-sighted legislation, and sometimes some really bad
examples of the tyranny of the majority over some minority. California
is sort of the poster child for this.
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jaklumen
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response 5 of 6:
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Apr 11 22:32 UTC 2002 |
Hmmm, this is happening in our state? Sounds vaguely familiar.
Initiatives do backfire, especially here. Recent ones caused problems
with transportation issues.. but then, I live east of the Cascades,
hee hee. Western Washington has got it bad there on some freeways.
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mcnally
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response 6 of 6:
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Apr 13 01:44 UTC 2002 |
It's probably worth mentioning that Tim Eyman, Washington state's ballot
initiative king, was recently found to be siphoning money from the
foundations he established to promote his initiative drives and is in a
heap of trouble..
I don't think it at all unlikely that his political opponents in the state
government did everything they could to sabotage his efforts and to smear
him personally but in the end he handed things to them on a silver platter.
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