The War on Direct Democracy

…Common Sense with Paul Jacob (Listen to the Podcast):

Career politicians and ideological allies have been waging an ever-more-vicious war on citizen initiative rights.

Some of the sordid details are reported in political journalist John Fund’s Wall Street Journal article, “The Far Left’s War on Direct Democracy.”

The tactics used to assail statewide petition drives range from “restrictive laws to outright thuggery.”

The restrictions involve anything from slashing the time allowed for collecting signatures to massively increasing the cost of running a ballot campaign.

The thuggery also takes many forms. Often, so-called “blockers” are recruited to harass circulators and prospective signers.

Seeking to imprison people for ten years for promoting an initiative, based on zero evidence of wrongdoing, also counts as thuggery, I think. That’s what the Oklahoma attorney general is trying to do to Rick Carpenter, Susan Johnson, and Yours Truly. Fund notes the hypocrisy of indicting us for allegedly hiring “out of state” petitioners, when state officials couldn’t care less about how “out of state” the blockers are.

Visit freepauljacob.com for more details about our case.

The groups using the most vicious tactics to undermine the process tend to be far left-wing. Their pet causes tend to be much less popular than reforms like term limits, capping state spending, and the like. If they have to destroy democracy to get their way, that’s fine with them.

But we don’t have to let them get away with it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.