It may be too late for ballot initiatives to be on the ballot, but if 2018 will be a wave election then it would be a good time to push for them. So what ones would be good ideas?
Universal health care?
Higher minimum wage?
Drug law liberalization?
Or are ballot initiatives only good in presidential years?
A ballot initiative calling for the return of Dignity, Intelligence, and Honor to the national political landscape.
Michigan’s gonna likely have a “Voters, Not Politicians” initiative to set up a bipartisan board to draw congressional and legislative districts. The gerrymandered republicans in lansing aren’t happy but I don’t think they can do much about it. The group running it and the canvassers have been amazing.
Even the name of the group “Voters, Not Politicians” was tactically brilliant. People in my relatively conservative area have been signing petitions outside the library non-stop for months.
Expansion of Medicaid in states that have rejected it.
Voting rights (automatic and same-day registration, early voting, rollback of felony disenfranchisement, etc.)
I agree. This is the fundamental right that Democrats need to work on. Everything else would flow from it.
Referenda to require licensing of firearms and of firearms users. Not “confiscation,” just licensing, like the old days.
(I think it was just this last week that I found out that my state got rid of firearms licenses about a decade ago. I am aghast.)
I think Democrats should start with less controversial goals, even if they are low risk low reward type things. Net neutrality bills would be a good place to start. Legalizing, or at least decriminalizing, marijuana is another. More controversial things like gun control should take a back seat until after 2020. Focusing on more controversial items like that might get the far left energized, but it would also anger the far right, which is more organized and numerous than the far left. Meanwhile the more moderate people on the left will be turned off by the conflicts and be less likely to vote in 2020.
I don’t think anything is going to turn off Democrats from turning out to vote against the Swampmaster-in-Chief in 2020, which necessarily also includes ballot initiatives.
Better idea: Universal vote-by-mail. Basically, everyone gets an absentee ballot and can either mail it back or leave it at various drop sites (usually libraries, city halls, and similar locations). This actually costs less to run than traditional elections. It’s also less subject to shenanigans, which is probably why TPTB in most states oppose them.
Felony disenfranchisment is only a problem in a few states, one of which is Florida, which does allow initiatives. Another is Virginia and, as far as I can tell, they don’t have them.
Well, I see it as a problem in 48 states, although I recognize that trying to enact the Maine/Vermont option by initiative would be difficult and possibly counterproductive. But I think it would be easier to make the case for, say, someone on probation to be allowed to vote, and there are a number of states that prohibit that and have initiatives.
And Florida is the number 1 target. I believe there’s already an effort there, though it will be tough as it needs 60% to pass.
Anti-gerrymandering is the #1 priority, but other voting rights are pretty close behind. Both are also pretty uncontroversial, at least if done correctly. Those are the reasons we need to use the referendum process to begin with: Fix those, and we’ll be able to get politicians who will address the rest.
Taking away the right to vote is considered part of the felon’s punishment, so getting people to restore them will be a hard sell. Restoring them for probationers would be easier, but probation is also considered punishment. But taking them away permanently as Florida does is just racism. Should be a much easier sell.
You mean initiative, not referendum. Initiatives come from citizens, referendums from the legislature.
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Both of these, and anti-gerrymandering laws in conjunction with the latter.
Minimum wage hikes in states that haven’t already passed laws putting them on the road to $12 or higher.
Laws (and ideally changes to state constitutions) banning discrimination against lesbians, gays, and transgender persons.
Changes to state constitutions giving localities the authority to institute things like higher local minimum wages, overtime, and greater paid leave than required by state law; stronger anti-discrimination laws; stronger firearms regulation; authority to provide services such as local broadband; and so forth. Limiting the authority of states to veto progressive local changes is important.
They’ll likely kill this the same way they killed the minimum wage increase- they can pass a bill that creates an advisory board to recommend district boundaries to the legislature, that can either accept or reject the findings. Then all they have to do is provide funding for implementing the law, and presto it becomes immune from ballot initiatives.
Yes, it’s hard to get legislators to do this because most people think it’s already been done. (Now, I think laws banning sex discrimination include that, but many courts disagree with the plain language, so it needs to be made even plainer.) John Boehner refused to allow a vote on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act on the grounds that it was already the law.
The amendment will in fact be on the ballot in Florida this November. It hasn’t had much of a campaign behind it yet, other than the canvassers themselves, so we’ll see how much fear of black people voting the Republicans will be able to muster. Inevitably that ties in with gun control, something they’ve already recognized they’re vulnerable on (duh), and they have just passed some legislation there to try to soften their brand image despite threats from the NRA terrorists. Florida voters passed a medical marijuana referendum recently, by a substantial margin, so it’s possible for progressives to win fights here with focused messages and effective countermeasures against fear-mongering.
The Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS Class of 2018 isn’t going away any time soon.
Nothing more than possibly gerrymanding.
It’s not so much that this is a chance to get things through. Perhaps it is. But the point of such ballot initiatives is to increase turnout for a specific set of voters. It can work both ways. Right now the forces of light have a significant enthusiasm advantage and we don’t want to do anything that will motivate our opponents to turnout in November.
As an example, I hold up 2004’s anti-same sex marriage amendment. On the books, it looked like one more thing that Ohio does - I lived there at the time - but it was really on the books to turn out the religious right voters.
It passed that year.
For: 3,329,335
Against: 2,065,462
That same year, Ohio was a key battleground state in Bush v Kerry. Those results?
Bush: 2,859,768
Kerry: 2,741,167
So 480,000 more people voted for the ballot initiative than voted for GWB. Had the swing in those voters been 55,000 Kerry would have won Ohio’s 20 electoral votes and therefore the presidency by 2 electoral votes.
So don’t misunderstand the usefulness of ballot initiatives by our opponents. We have a real chance here and don’t want to fuck this up by overreaching.
2018, the Biblical *Good vs Evil *battle looms ahead. This is going to be big. If you’re not registered to vote, shame on you.
Didn’t we have that one already? Evil won.