{"id":9695,"date":"2006-05-09T06:49:49","date_gmt":"2006-05-09T13:49:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2006\/05\/09\/the-power-of-direct-democracy.html"},"modified":"2014-11-05T15:20:03","modified_gmt":"2014-11-05T22:20:03","slug":"the_power_of_di","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/05\/09\/the_power_of_di.html","title":{"rendered":"The power of direct democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m not a huge fan of citizen-based legal initiatives. I think there’s a place for them, but they tend to be poorly written and too easily rushed through bits of demogoguery by special interests (while the latter can be said for legislative bills, at least those schmucks will have to face reelection at some point; nobody ever seems to get angsty over some ballot proposal they voted for six years ago). <\/p>\n

Colorado, in particular, has a very low threshold for getting measures on the ballot — you only need as many signatories on a petition as there were 5% of the folk who last voted for Secretary of State (always a terribly popular office to vote for, of course), which means about 68,000 names right now, statewide.<\/p>\n

All of which plays into this tale of Duelling Gay Marriage Initiatives<\/a>, hurtling to a ballot box near you (or, at least, near me) this fall:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. House Bill 1344, the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Responsibilities Act, passed by the state legislature for approval by the voters. It would create a domestic partnership law, allowing gay partners to handle each other’s medical decisions, adopt each other’s children, etc.\n
  2. A grass-roots initiative to invalidate 1344 (whether it passes or not) by amending the state constitution to bar anything “similar to marriage” for gays.<\/p>\n
  3. A grass-roots initiative to get around the other grass-roots initiative to declare by constitutional fiat that, no, 1344 isn’t really similar to marriage. So even if both the previous bills passed, if this one passed then 1344 would be okay. Maybe.<\/p>\n
  4. Yet another grass-roots initiative to put a gay marriage ban into the constitution.<\/ol>\n

    *sigh* Expect plenty of spleen-venting here viz #2 and #4 (and the anti-#1 folks), depending on who gets gets things on the ballot. For the moment, I only have so much spleen to go around, so I only want to use it on issues that come to pass …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I’m not a huge fan of citizen-based legal initiatives. I think there’s a place for them, but they tend to be poorly written and too easily rushed through bits of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[25,718,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gay-stuff","category-marriage-equality","category-politics-law"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":31276,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/08\/on-winning-minnesota.html","url_meta":{"origin":9695,"position":0},"title":"On winning Minnesota","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 8-Nov-12 7:52am","format":false,"excerpt":"Dale Carpenter makes the case that defeating passage of\u00a0Minnesota's ballot proposition to ban gay marriage was at least as important as the passage of initiatives\u00a0in other states to legalize it. Embedded Link The Volokh Conspiracy \u00bb Winning Minnesota Most of the post-election attention on the gay-marriage ballot fights has focused\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13603,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/11\/05\/with_an_admixture_of_sadn.html","url_meta":{"origin":9695,"position":1},"title":"With an admixture of sadness","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 5-Nov-08 11:42am","format":false,"excerpt":"Despite the general good news with political races around the nation, gay-related ballot initiatives generally came down anti-gay. In Arizona, the same-sex marriage ban appears to be passing. With 99%...","rel":"","context":"In "Elections 2008"","block_context":{"text":"Elections 2008","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/elections-2008"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7073,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/11\/03\/the_morning_aft-2.html","url_meta":{"origin":9695,"position":2},"title":"The Morning After the Night Before","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 3-Nov-04 6:24am","format":false,"excerpt":"Well ... I'm glad I didn't stay up for the \"results\" ... Let's do a run-down of the ballot to see how my personal choices did: President: Well, I definitely...","rel":"","context":"In "Elections 2004"","block_context":{"text":"Elections 2004","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/elections-2004"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":151964,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2020\/11\/05\/the-2020-colorado-ballot-proposition-results.html","url_meta":{"origin":9695,"position":3},"title":"The 2020 Colorado ballot proposition results","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 5-Nov-20 12:52am","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm mostly happy about the results.","rel":"","context":"In "Elections 2020"","block_context":{"text":"Elections 2020","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/elections-2020"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Colorado-voting.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Colorado-voting.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Colorado-voting.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Colorado-voting.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":31142,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/05\/the-ballot-measures-we-didnt-get-in-colorado.html","url_meta":{"origin":9695,"position":4},"title":"The ballot measures we didn't get in Colorado","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 5-Nov-12 3:32pm","format":false,"excerpt":"We have only three on the state-wide ballot -- here's a list of 20 others that didn't make it, from Personhood, to Same-Sex Marriage, to Concealed Carry, to eliminating all property taxes.\u00a0 Embedded Link Colorado 2012 ballot measures - Ballotpedia There are 19 hours left until polls open on November\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9880,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/10\/16\/the_shift_in_gay_marriage.html","url_meta":{"origin":9695,"position":5},"title":"The shift in gay marriage bans","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 16-Oct-06 10:38am","format":false,"excerpt":"In 2004, thirteen states passed constitutional amendments declaring marriage as being one-man+one-woman. Still more similar bans are on the ballot this year (in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota,...","rel":"","context":"In "Elections 2006"","block_context":{"text":"Elections 2006","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/elections-2006"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46707,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9695\/revisions\/46707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}