On December 18, the 10th circuit struck down Oklahoma’s ban on out-of-state circulators for initiatives. Yes on Term Limits v Savage, no. 07-6233. The decision is here. It is 16 pages long and says that there is no strong evidence that out-of-state circulators are more likely to engage in fraud than in-state circulators. Also it says that if Oklahoma needs to question circulators after the petition has been submitted, the state is free to pass a law saying that circulators must agree to return for questioning.
There are now four circuits that have invalidated bans on out-of-state circulators (the 6th, 7th, 9th and 10th), and only one circuit, the 8th, that has upheld them. Furthermore, the 8th circuit decision was from North Dakota, a state that has no voter registration, and therefore the 8th circuit decision can be said not to apply to the other 49 states that do have voter registration.
This decision is good news for Paul Jacob and his associates, who have been in jeopardy of a criminal prosecution for conspiring to bring out-of-state circulators into Oklahoma.
Excellent.
Sounds good to me as well. I don’t have a problem with people politicking in a state where they do not reside.
As foreign (to the state) money starts to get involved my hackles rise some but I don’t have a coherent viewpoint on the role of foreign (to the state) money and politics.
WOW – A great holiday surprise from the powers that be!
WHOOOOOOHOOOOOO!!!!! A victory for our side! This is a HUGE victory for ballot access. YEAH!!!!!!
Agreed, it is a big win.
Now if it will be enforced properly…
Ballot access Andy??? I tried to help you with that petition, and you wouldn’t even accept my help. I managed to get one signature anyway on my own, but I was waiting for a call back from you because you changed the petition after I got that signature, and didn’t post the new one on your web site. I called a lot of times, and I finally managed to get that woman in Tulsa who never answers her phone, and talked to her. She said she would send me a copy of the new petition, but I never got anything.
If you really want something passed, you ought to accept help from in-state people who offer. This out-of-state circulators decision is a huge loss for a relatively poor state like Oklahoma. Now rich out-of state corporations can get their stupid things like TABOR passed, and we won’t be able to do a thing about it, because we don’t have the money to stand up to them. I swear if this ends up giving the rich and powerful even more power, I’m moving out.
And thx to the Reform Party of OK,
oops, they did not do a thing!
—– Donald Raymond Lake
A step in the right direction.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
Daniel, quit bitching. What you’re bitching about is the first amendment to the US Constitution, and its corollary, individual freedom. If you want a job as a petitioner, there are unlimited numbers of petitioning jobs out there (especially for socialists like yourself). That you’d have to get off your ass and travel out of state is no worse than others having to occasionally travel into your state for similar opportunities.
BTW: TABOR is a good initiative. It limits the overbearing and unconstitutional power of state governments by placing a limit on their spending.
(And look at all the wonderful things that spending buys: waste, corruption, and violence –all with just barely enough legitimate government force to justify it to the people.)
This overturn of the ban on out of state petitioners is a great decision for the people of Oklahoma.
If the decision had gone the other way, the court would have essentially been telling all Americans that they had absolutely no right to petition their government for a redress of grievances. (And yes, I know that Bob Shultz’s interpretation on this subject is correct, and that initiative petitioning is not what the founders meant by “petitioning our government for a redress of grievances”.)
The ability to work for those who oppose the power of government is essential to winning back any of our lost freedoms.
Those who oppose the right to be paid for speaking to petition signers are tyrants. Circulating a petition is difficult, depressing work (unless you ignore the implications of the knowledge it gives you. Then it can be kind of ‘upbeat’, as long as the weather is nice), and after expenses it doesn’t pay much unless you are unselective about what you circulate. Moreover, when pro-freedom people are using the petitioning process (their ability to speak, and to speak through others whose voices are greater than their own), they are using their first amendment rights to free speech.
My thanks to the 10th circuit court for getting it right!
I see the Leftists like Daniel above are already moaning this wonderful decision for us Rightwing Libertarians.
Yes Daniel, WE WILL NOW MOVE FORWARD WITH TAXPAYER BILL OF RIGHTS ALL OVER THE NATION!!!
Yes, Daniel, we will now move forward with Term Limits, Property Rights/Against Eminent Domain laws initiatives, Recall efforts of corrupt Democrat Politicians, and Repeal of Nanny-State Laws pushed by Leftists like Smoking Bans and Seat Belt Laws.
You’re worst fears have just been realized.
This IS A HUGE VICTORY FOR LIBERTY LOVERS, and a huge loss for you Fascist Democrats!!!
Oh, btw, Winger doesn’t report this, but the Attorney General who tried to jail Libertarian Paul Jacob, is of course a DEMOCRAT!!
Funny how the Leftists like Daniel above are perfectly fine with Blockers trying to stop us libertarians and conservatives from getting our initiatives on the ballot, who reside out-of-state, yet he’s not okay with petitioners from other states.
Each State happens to be a SOVEREIGN nation-State.
See Art. VII of the nearly dead U.S.A. Constitution.
Result – ONLY the Electors of a State have any *political* business in taking part in the State’s election system — regardless of any MORON opinion by the party hack Supremes.
i.e. 1st Amdt stuff is quite separate from such *internal* election system stuff.
Any unemployed Chinese / Russian communists coming to the U.S.A. to circulate petitions — or unemployed Americans going to China or Russia and trying to engage in free speech or press stuff or even circulating pro-Democracy petitions ???
I’m not exactly a leftist.
I’m totally against the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, because I believe that since we, the people, elected our state legislators, we ought to have faith in them to pass reasonable tax laws. If they don’t, then vote them out, but while they are in, we need to give them the freedom to do their job.
I am for term limits.
I am for property rights against misuse of Eminent Domain, although I do believe Eminent Domain has some legitimate uses.
Recall efforts – I am undecided.
I don’t care one way or the other on nanny-state laws.
I am not quite understanding what Eric is trying to say, but to make my own comments more clear, I definitely support increased ballot access, although I didn’t realize this was a ballot-access website when I first posted the comment (I came to this news story page directly from a web search). I am definitely not a libertarian, but if you are, I agree you have a right to be on the ballot, and that’s why I tried to volunteer to help circulate the petition about 2 years ago when some libertarian group from Tulsa was trying to circulate it. At first, I thought Andy who posted the first comment above was a member of that Tulsa-based group.
But if you try to pass the TABOR again, I will be fighting you on it.
“Daniel Narvaes Says:
December 18th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Ballot access Andy??? I tried to help you with that petition, and you wouldn’t even accept my help. I managed to get one signature anyway on my own, but I was waiting for a call back from you because you changed the petition after I got that signature, and didn’t post the new one on your web site. I called a lot of times, and I finally managed to get that woman in Tulsa who never answers her phone, and talked to her. She said she would send me a copy of the new petition, but I never got anything.”
I have NO IDEA WHO THIS GUY IS OR ABOUT WHAT HE IS SPEAKING. He must have me confused with a different Andy.
“If you really want something passed, you ought to accept help from in-state people who offer. This out-of-state circulators decision is a huge loss for a relatively poor state like Oklahoma. Now rich out-of state corporations can get their stupid things like TABOR passed, and we won’t be able to do a thing about it, because we don’t have the money to stand up to them. I swear if this ends up giving the rich and powerful even more power, I’m moving out.”
This is a bunch if crap. Banning people who are normally domiciled in a different state from engaging in a 1st amendment activity (which is what gathering petition signatures is) in another state violates the 1st amendment to the US Constitution and it also violates similiar provisions in every state constitution that I’ve ever read, including the Oklhoma State Constitution.
Nobody forces anybody to sign a petition. If people don’t want to sign it they don’t have to sign, petition circulators just OFFER people the opportunity to sign if they feel inclined to do so.
“Daniel Narvaes Says:
December 18th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
I’m not exactly a leftist.
I’m totally against the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, because I believe that since we, the people, elected our state legislators, we ought to have faith in them to pass reasonable tax laws. If they don’t, then vote them out, but while they are in, we need to give them the freedom to do their job.”
Oh yeah, we can really trust politicians….NOT! LOL!
“Result – ONLY the Electors of a State have any *political* business in taking part in the State’s election system — regardless of any MORON opinion by the party hack Supremes.”
This is a ridiculous statement. Asking people to sign petitions is a FREE SPEECH activity. If you are going to ban somebody from asking another person to sign a petition just because the person holding the petition normally resides in a different state, you should also prohibit a person who happens to be from a different state who is travelling through say Illinois from talking about anything that is going on in politics in that state – like say the current scandal surrounding Governor Rod Blagojevich.
Asking a person to sign a petition is NOT the same thing as voting. It is a FREE SPEECH activity. Can’t you understand this? Do you not support free speech? Are you anti-American or something?
Does this mean that states who forbid out of state people collecting signatures like Montana will have to change their laws on the ballot process. Has the paid per signature also changed?
This will carry over to Montana, and South Dakota, two states who most recently changed their laws to ban out-of-state petitioners.
You know who is probably more pissed off about this than anyone else? Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer. That assclown Democrat got out libertarian petitions kicked off the ballot for Property Rights, and Spending Caps in 2006 using the out-of-state petitioner argument.
I was one of those petititoners.
This ruling is extra-sweet with the Montana angle and Schweitzer considered.
Let’s hope this ruling gets the stupid, evil, fascist State of Oklahoma case (vendetta) against Paul Jacob, et. al. thrown out of court.
Ralph Nader’s earlier victory in the 9th circuit this year on the out-of-state petition issue has the effect of making the Idaho and Montana laws invalid, since those two states are in the 9th circuit. But South Dakota and Nebraska are in the 8th circuit, the only circuit where the law was upheld. It is likely that a lawsuit to invalidate Idaho’s out-of-state petitioner law will be filed next week.
Also don’t forget that Arizona has appealed the Nader decision to the US Supreme Court, which hasn’t said yet whether it will hear it.
I am sorry, I did confuse Andy with someone else.
I see your point on the free-speech angle, but my concern is that out-of-state interests with budgets a lot bigger than anything in Oklahoma are going to have too much influence over Oklahoma politics. I trust that the other people commenting here have good intentions for the people of Oklahoma, but I think there are others who are just out to make money, at the expense of the general population. Our state Consitution here in Oklahoma is frightfully easy to change; all it takes is a petition and a 50% vote of the people, and those things can be bought. I fear that allowing out-of-state petition circulators will make that far easier to change the constitution in ways that are harmful to the people of Oklahoma.
Signing a petition is easy – I even accidentally signed that TABOR petition before I reconsidered. Collecting signatures requires more commitment, and by restricting this to people who live in the state, at least they have a vested interest in making sure the changes they are trying to institute are good for the people of the state. If paid signature gatherers come in from elsewhere, they may be trying to improve things for the state, but they also have the motive of earning money, and they don’t have to live with the consequences if things go wrong.
From a logical standpoint, if the actual signing of the petition is restricted to registered voters, it doesn’t seem like too much of a restriction to also require that of the signature gatherers. After all, free speech does not imply that you can vote in a state you are visiting. The question is: Is signature gathering on par with voting, with respect to the level of participation in politics, and if so, shouldn’t it also be restricted to people who live in the place?
Signature gathering isn’t on a par with voting. It’s on a par with driving people to the polls, or giving a campaign contribution, or helping a candidate set up a web page, or otherwise advising a campaign, or providing accounting services to a campaign, or doing polling for a campaign, or legal advice to a campaign. It’s just plain old work. We don’t worry about the residency of other types of professional campaign workers; why should initiative circulators be treated any differently than other election campaign professionals?
Let’s give credit to the plaintiffs’ attorneys, Todd Graves of the law firm of Graves, Bartle and Marcus, and Steve Hoersting of the Center for Competitive Politics (of which I am Chairman). See http://www.campaignfreedom.org/news_center/newsID.62/news_detail.asp.
it doesn’t change the fact there was a blatant disregard for the law before it was changed how sad
Witnessing Elector signatures is akin to a Notary Public function — a very high position in the law — even given some status in some State constitutions.
Where are those millions of illegal immigrants and outer space folks circulating petitions ???
I.E. Folks are or are NOT members (ELECTORS) of each political community.
NON-members are ALIENS in the regime.
Way too difficult for the MORON party hack Supremes to understand.
Once upon a time some of the ancient Greek city-states had the death penalty for NON-members who got involved in the government of the city-state. Guess why ?