This a diary raising an interest of concern for any and all Arkansans here in the Dailykos community. It’s part of a larger trend in America though, the attack on democracy across the nation that seeks to protect the interests of the wealthy and the powerful and those who would govern without any real check on their power or actions.
Since the early 20th Century, the Arkansas Constitution has guaranteed the people of our state the right to change government and policy in our state through direct democracy via ballot initiative and referendum. It is a feature in our state’s constitution that is almost unique among southern states. Like direct democracy in general, it’s no more perfect than people are. It’s been used in the past for some terrible things, and speaking as a gay man the anti-gay initiatives of the previous decade are a great example of this and there are a host of other examples. But it can be used to advance progressive causes as well and it recent years, with Republican dominance at the state level it’s become the only means of getting anything progressive passed at the state level. That’s included medical marijuana, an increase in the minimum wage to $11 an hour that’s being phased in to be the highest rate in the southeast, and some level of ethics and campaign finance reform in the state. There’s potential to do so much more, and it really is our only avenue to pursue any kind of economic justice with the corporate interests controlling the state legislature or, for that matter, to police our state government as no significant ethics legislation has ever passed through the legislature in the history of the state but has always depended on the ballot for passage.
However, this year the state legislature, at the behest of the Arkansas Chamber of Commerce and Farm Bureau, has placed a proposed amendment on the ballot for next year that, if approved by the voters, would functionally strip ordinary Arkansans of their right to use the ballot to bring about the changes they want to see in state government. The amendment would do the following:
• Require signatures of at least one-half of the designated percentage of the electors in 45 counties instead of the current 15 counties.
• Require a three-fifths vote of both chambers of the General Assembly to refer a proposed constitutional amendment to voters.
• Eliminate the 30-day signature cure period, in which ballot-measure sponsors may collect additional signatures if they submitted at least 75 percent of the required number of registered-voter signatures on time.
• Require challenges to the sufficiency of any ballot measure to be filed no later than April 15 of the election year.
• Require citizen-initiated petitions to be filed with the secretary of state by Jan. 15 of the election year rather than the current four months before the election."
These drastically shortened time limits and stricter requirements effectively shut out grass roots activists of all political stripes who might not have a huge amount of money to work with and who might be on a political learning curve despite their hearts being in the right place and their ideas being good. The Chamber of Commerce, the Farm Bureau, gambling interests looking to make a buck in the state, and a host of other well finance corporate interests will still be able to get their pet issues on the ballot, but ordinary people in the state are going to be shut out, which is exactly what those corporate interests and the politicians they’ve bought want.
So, what are ordinary people who want their voices heard in our state to do? Organize and defeat this democracy destroying nonsense at the polls. We’ve got an organizing effort, ProtectARVoices, working on getting activists and concerned citizens across the state mobilized to fight back next year with rallies, protests, letter writing campaigns, online activism, the works. It’s a grassroots effort, no money in it, no PAC or anything else, just ordinary people working to make sure that the wealthy, the powerful, and the corrupt people in our state government who should be working for us don’t get to silence us through this attack on our right guaranteed in the state constitution. So if you’re an Arkansan, and especially if you can help organize a protest, write, or even just hold a sign by a road, we need your help. Click that link for ProtectARVoices and see what you can do to help.
And if you’re not from our state you still need to pay attention to what’s going on here and how we’re going to fight back. These kinds of tactics aren’t limited to our little conservative state. Democracy is under attack in America today in so many ways, and this fight could come to your state before you know it if it hasn’t already.