The Wyoming Constitution Party will try to collect 37,606 valid signatures on a referendum petition. The signatures are due May 28. No referendum petition has succeeded in Wyoming since 1996. The party opposes a bill that weakened the power of the state’s elected Superintendent of Public Instruction. See this story. If the party succeeds with the petition, then the law is suspended until the voters vote on it.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
Do the Libertarians and Country Party agree with this attempt? It would seem to me a joint venture might get lots of publicity. As I read the article I am really not quite sure what is going on. It appears to me that another gubernatorial appointment position would co-opt some of the policy duties of the elected Superintendent of Public Instruction. I would welcome someone from the LP and the Wyoming Country Party commenting.
Good luck with this. Wyoming is a difficult state for gathering petition signatures, and that is an unreasonably high number of signatures needed to qualify this referendum in comparison to the population of the state.
There’s a reason that no citizens initiative or referendum petition has qualified for the ballot in Wyoming since the early 1990’s.
Jennifer Young, the new chairwoman of the Wyoming Constitution Party, has not contacted me about this (I’m chair of Wyoming Country Party). Quite frankly, it is almost impossible to get an initiative (create a law) or referendum (negate a law) on the ballot in Wyoming. That said, we are supportive of the concept of overturning SF-104, commonly called “the Cindy Hill bill”. She’s the elected Superintendent of Public Education who was stripped of almost all duties which were assigned to a bureaucrat appointed by the governor.
Here’s why it’s nigh impossible to get a referendum on the ballot. The first step is to pay $500 along with the signatures of 100 “sponsors” who are Wyoming registered voters. That’s doable except for the hindrance that if you didn’t vote in the last election, you’re not a registered voter. After approval by the Secretary of State, the sponsors must collect the 37,000 signatures (15% of registered voters). Sponsors may designate additional circulators to gather petitions. Circulators must be residents of Wyoming. If a circulator is being paid, the notice “This circulator is being paid…” must be clearly displayed. Circulators may only be paid a salary – they may not be paid per signature. Petition pages are numbered by the Secretary of State – no duplication of blank petition sheets is allowed. Campaign finance reports must be filed for all expenditures. In addition to the 15% of registered voters statewide requirement, the 15% of registered voters threshold must also be met in 16 of the 23 counties. And now for the show stopper – the petitions must be completed and submitted by June 1st of this year.
FWIW, the first hearing on the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law will be held March 14th in state court. Given the good old boy nature of all three branches of Wyoming government, it is doubtful that the court will overturn SF-104.
So who didn’t get along with Cindy Hill? The State Board of Education; or the employees of the Department of Education?
Thanks for the detail about the probable futility of this effort, Don. What a shame.
Jim – both. And the legislators. And the governor. Cindy Hill was a real burr under the good old boy network’s saddle.
#3, Wyoming can’t require circulators to be Wyoming residents, because Wyoming is in the 10th circuit, and the 10th circuit invalidated out-of-state circulator bans in Yes on Term Limits v Savage, 550 F 3d 1023 (2008).
The rank and file voters were very unnerved by by the action of the establishment in stripping Cindy Hill of her Wyoming Constitutional responsibilities regarding education. Opposition to the bill was over whelming, but the state legislators passed the bill in spite of this.
Reaction has been strong and swift. One hundred sponsors were needed to get the petition approved. Thus far over 200 such signatures have come in and at least 400 are expected before the $500.00 fee is submitted to the state with the sponsoring signatures. According to CP State Chairman Jennifer Young, nearly $4,000.00 has been raised for the petition effort. It has been given excellent coverage in 19 of the Wyoming’s 23 counties. The effort has also been covered by state wide news media TV, radio and newspaper and continues to get coverage. Support is coming not only from the Country and Libertarian party members, but also from large numbers of Republican as well as Independents and conservative Democrats. The dead line for turning the petition in is May 28th, but the CP leadership feels certain they can get well over the nearly 38,000 thousand signatures needed.
In a nut shell the issue hit a raw nerve with Wyoming voters. Taylor Haynes ran as a candidate for governor in 2010 since the CP fell short just 388 signatures of making ballot position that year and he won over 7% of the vote… the highest number of votes cast for a state wide candidate in Wyoming in over 100 years. For a black candidate to get that many votes in Wyoming is simply unprecedented. The CP and the Wyoming voters just might surprise a lot of us on this effort.
Good luck!
#6 There were 10 Senate Republicans and 20 House Republicans who vote against passage. Are they likely to assist in a referendum effort? There were three switches when the senate concurred with the House amendments, so maybe part of it was show. Are there any advantages to getting a 2/3 majority on final passage of a bill in Wyoming? I couldn’t find anything in the Constitution.
If you want to get rid of the office, propose a constitutional amendment.
The list of the Secretary of State’s new “duties” is childish. They could have as easily required her to right “I won’t bug Matt Mead” 500 times on a chalkboard.
Frank Fluckinger said: “In a nut shell the issue hit a raw nerve with Wyoming voters. Taylor Haynes ran as a candidate for governor in 2010 since the CP fell short just 388 signatures of making ballot position that year and he won over 7% of the vote… the highest number of votes cast for a state wide candidate in Wyoming in over 100 years. For a black candidate to get that many votes in Wyoming is simply unprecedented. The CP and the Wyoming voters just might surprise a lot of us on this effort.”
Taylor Haynes did a great job as a candidate, with the exception of not making it on the ballot (and yes, there are not that many black people in Wyoming). If I was a Constitution Party member in Wyoming I’d urge him to run for office again.
Having said this, qualifying this referendum for the ballot is a different animal. It sounds like a good issue and I admire their dedication for trying to bring this to a referendum, but the requirement in Wyoming to qualify initiative and referendum petitions for the ballot is just way too difficult, and I do not see anyway they could make it unless they’ve got big money to spend, which I doubt that they have.
There really ought to be an effort in Wyoming to ease their initiative and referendum process. It is one thing to have the process on paper, but if the process has been made so difficult that it has been rendered ineffective, which it has in Wyoming, then it is almost like not having the process.
I think that citizens initiative, referendum, and recall is a good thing, because it provides a check and balance against the power of the politicians.
“Richard Winger Says:
March 3rd, 2013 at 5:29 pm
#3, Wyoming can’t require circulators to be Wyoming residents, because Wyoming is in the 10th circuit, and the 10th circuit invalidated out-of-state circulator bans in Yes on Term Limits v Savage, 550 F 3d 1023 (2008).”
Richard, what all states are in the 10th circuit?
A lot of times there may be court rulings that are in one’s favor, but government officials are either ignorant about them, or they intentionally ignore them, so you’ve got to sue them again in order to prove to them that they are in violation of a court ruling.
Frank Fluckiger said: “According to CP State Chairman Jennifer Young, nearly $4,000.00 has been raised for the petition effort.”
They are going to need way, way, way, way more than $4,000 to make this thing happen.
The Tenth Circuit includes Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Kansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. It was once part of the Ninth Circuit, but it was split off to form the new Tenth Circuit was created. It think that was in the 1950’s.
#14 It was part of the 8th Circuit, which in 1866 consisted of MN, IA, MO, AR, and KS. As new states were added to the west they were added to the circuit. In 1929, the 10th circuit was created, with its existing members.
The 9th Circuit was originally CA, OR, and NV. It appears somewhat happenstance in the division between 8th and 9th. When the 6 northwestern states joined the Union in 1889-1891, WA, ID, and MT were added to the 9th, while WY, SC, and ND were added to the 8th. Similarly, in 1812, AZ and NM were divided between the two courts.
It appears difficult to move states between circuits. For example if MT and ID were moved from the 9th to the 10th to balance the case load, would appeals court justices and case precedents also be shifted.
The last major changes, the splitting of the 8th into 8th and 10th in 1929; and the 5th into the 5th and 11th in 1980, were simple splits between circuits.
http://www.fjc.gov/history/home.nsf/page/index.html
Jennifer Young here 🙂
I am filing the initial application with $500 filing fee and “not less than one-hundred qualified registered voters on Wednesday, March 6.
The petition printing job has been opened to three printers on the Secretary of State’s approved vendor list and that cost is covered.
If anyone would like to collect additional circulator signatures or donate monitarily to the task of educating and keeping this in the forefront of the popular mind for the next >1 year i would be glad to hear from you.
Meanwhile you can peruse articles in the Casper Star Tribune, the Cheyenne Eagle Tribune, and many other newspapers around the state and online at Wyoming Public Radio and Bigfoot 99. On Wednesday after filing we will appear live on Cheyenne Channel 5 on the 5:30 news edition.
God bless!
Sincerely,
Jennifer
friend_of_God2007@hotmail.com
Why does Wyoming take federal funding for K-12? Don’t they get enough money from mineral extraction to pay for education? Don’t those cowboys want even a little bit of freedom from federal dictates?
Wyoming takes federal K-12 money because the education bureaucracy in Wyoming is very powerful. Wyoming spends $18,000 per student on K-12 education, more than any other state (in some surveys WY comes in third slightly behind NY and NJ). Wyoming is a big government state – probably the biggest government in the intermountain west. Another measure is that Wyoming has the highest ratio of government employees to private sector employees of all states. The only thing Wyoming state government does right is that it takes in more money than it spends, saving the difference in various “rainy day” funds. 🙁
The federal money that is part of the issue. We the people DO NOT WANT FEDERAL MONEY for education or anything else.
Just an update for those of you interested…
Wednesday’s filing went great, we turned in 300 signatures, 231 were valid.
Moving on to the next phase.
Still looking for other volunteers to join together 🙂
God bless
Sincerely,
Jennifer Young