The process is already extremely difficult. To change state law, groups must get tens of thousands of the legal voters in two thirds of the state’s congressional districts to sign a petition. Missouri has more than 4 million registered voters, so any group trying to get an initiative on the ballot must collect more than 100,000 signatures.

And it’s expensive. Paul Jacob, president of Citizens in Charge, a nonprofit group dedicated to preserving and advancing the ability of U.S. citizens to petition state government directly, estimates that the minimum cost for signature collection in Missouri is more than $2 per signature, and can be significantly higher. This means that a group of people trying to change government for the better would likely need at least $300,000 even to attempt to bring a state law change before Missouri voters for their consideration.

In fact, most groups that have attempted to change state law with the current initiative petition process have failed. In recent years, Missouri Citizens for Property Rights, a group attempting to strengthen safeguards against the abuse of eminent domain, managed to gather more than 160,000 signatures from registered Missouri voters but still fell short of the already hefty requirements imposed.

Justus’ proposal will make it at least 50 percent harder (and that much more expensive) for Missourians to bring an issue to statewide voters. She proposes requiring that groups collect signatures from registered voters in all congressional districts. That would mean groups would have to collect, at minimum, signatures from an additional 45,000 registered Missouri voters. That’s at least another $100,000 in expenses. Why would Justus want to restrict this process further, so that only the most wealthy individuals and groups can participate?

According to the St. Louis Business Journal, Justus hopes that the proposed law will make it more difficult and costly for people and organizations to “buy laws and constitutional amendments.” She is certainly right — her proposal will make it more difficult. But her logic is flawed. Justus’ proposal will make it more difficult for any group to impact state government directly, not only those she suspects of trying to “buy” laws.

One of the greatest strengths of American government is that there are a number of checks and balances at the federal, state, and local levels that limit the ability of any one branch of government to abuse its power. The initiative petition process is one of those checks on power, and restricting it further will serve only to erode Missourians’ ability to limit legislators by initiating good — but politically difficult — policy change.

Audrey Spalding is a policy analyst for the Show-Me Institute, an independent think tank promoting free-market solutions for Missouri public policy.

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As it turns out, I can postpone the vigorous exercising of my argumentation skills for another day, because Paul Jacob, founder of Citizens in Charge, has made the argument for me:

Sometimes it takes money to do things. Say, to collect signatures for a petition. If you want folks to be hitting the sidewalks all day inviting support for a ballot question, you might want to pay them so they can pay the rent while they’re doing this.

Critics of citizen initiative rights often complain about paying people to gather signatures — especially if they’re paid per signature. They even try to outlaw it. If workers are paid per signature, aren’t they motivated to commit fraud? Concoct fake signatures?

Let’s think this through. If the possibility of fraud justifies outlawing a paid activity, how many paid activities could then be outlawed? Well, all of them.

Outlawing fraud and outlawing a freedom that might be abused are two different things. All freedom can be abused. […]

There are bad guys. But we don’t criminalize all conduct, even the good, because of the possibility of bad. Instead, we make laws against bad conduct.

This deserves emphasis: It is unjustifiable to outlaw an activity just because it might provide an incentive for individual acts of fraud — especially when that activity is associated with such a crucial right as political speech. Officials should investigate and prosecute cases of fraud that have actually occurred; engaging in prior restraint based on what officials imagine could happen is a subversion of the First Amendment.

And, yes, it is a First Amendment issue. Paul goes on to mention that, less than a week ago, an Ohio appeals court overturned a similar law that had banned pay-per-signature initiative efforts. The court’s decision is rooted in basic constitutional free speech provisions:

As with the law in general, the First Amendment is a jealous mistress. It enables the people to exchange ideas (popular and unpopular alike), to assemble with the hope of changing minds, and to alter or preserve how we govern ourselves. But in return, it demands that sometimes seemingly reasonable measures enacted by our governments give way.

The State of Ohio enacted a provision making it a felony to pay anyone for gathering signatures on election-related petitions on any basis other than the time worked. It did so for the sensible purpose of reducing fraudulent signatures. The provision, however, runs afoul of the First Amendment because it creates a significant burden on a core political speech right that is not narrowly tailored. Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment against the State.

The judge recognized that the Constitution also gives government officials "the authority to determine ‘The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections,’" but noted that this authority can’t place a significant or severe burden on individuals or groups who organize to engage in otherwise lawful political expression.

At any rate, Justin’s argument has another noteworthy hole. He, again, points out that initiatives are "responsible for terrible legislation" — a point I had already ceded in my earlier defense of the initiative process. But, as with any other phenomenon, it’s important to judge the effects of initiatives on balance, and the ratio of good initiatives that voters have passed is far, far better than the ratio of good legislation that politicians have passed.

It’s no contest, really. For all the bad that initiatives could do, they have an excellent track record of the good far outweighing the bad. That’s no small thing. In practice, the initiative process is one more check and balance on ever-growing government power.

The post Initiative Process Deserves Support appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

And, all things considered, the track record of initiative and referendum throughout the nation is great. For every misguided minimum wage increase and tax hike that voters pass, there are dozens of initiatives that have cut taxes, slashed spending, passed term limits (on legislators who wouldn’t have done it to themselves in a million years), and generally made elected officials more accountable to the public in many ways.

I also disagree with David Stokes’ good-government optimism — the notion that if we don’t like how our elected officials govern us, we can always replace them. Luckily, that’s more true in Missouri than in many other states, thanks to our legislative term limits that help break the stranglehold of incumbency. It’s not enough, though. The initiative process acts as a check on both legislative excess and timidity — and as a check on the initiative process itself (many times, citizens have struck down laws that they later recognize to be bad choices).

I have a background that’s liable to give me my own biases in favor of initiative and referendum laws — after all, I spent years working with the venerable Paul Jacob, who founded Citizens in Charge (not to mention Dane Waters, who I helped to relaunch the Initiative & Referendum Institute website a few years ago, before the group was affiliated with USC; check out the nifty U.S. image map I made). Really, though, I believe the initiative process is valuable not because of personal loyalty to friends and colleagues, but because the data is so convincing.

There tend to be other objections to the initiative process: Don’t wealthy people sneak in from out of town and "trick" local voters to pass something they don’t really want? Well, there may be a lot of spending going on, but there is no evidence that these efforts have tricked anybody. Voters have repeatedly shot down initiatives with the biggest funding. Don’t initiatives stand in contravention of our representative republican form of government? Nope, not at all.

The initiative process is, by far, more a tool for good than for mischief. By all means, petitioners should be held accountable for the signatures they collect, but laws that prohibit out-of-state petitioners or paid signature-gathering are blatant violations of the First Amendment (in conjunction with the Fourteenth), and encroach on the spirit of the Full Faith and Credit Clause, if not its most common interpretation.

I’ll end with the wise words of my pal Paul Jacob, who last year wrote his own take on Missouri officials’ efforts to pare down initiative rights:

Raising the bar to make citizen initiatives more difficult impacts the powerful groups the least. They can spend to overcome such hurdles. It’s the grassroots groups that get cut out.

And that’s no accident.

With so much of politics locked up by powerful career politicians and special interests, the voter initiative process is the one area they just can’t quite control. Voters are liable to think up all manners of reforms — from term limits to state spending caps. And no matter how much special interests spend, voters manage to enact critical reforms.

With government as big as Goliath, the initiative hands David a slingshot.

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Now, the Show-Me Institute has turned up in Common Sense for the first time:

[A] suggestion by a think tank in Missouri might cause a few heads to shake. In disbelief.

The idea? Make the Poplar Street Bridge a part-time toll bridge.

Southern Illinois University economist R. W. Hafer, writing for the Show-Me Institute, argues that another bridge might not even ease congestion. Why? By making commuting easier it would effectively lower the cost of commuting. When costs go down, demand grows, in this case even taking people off of public transit to drive their cars.

Putting a price on bridge travel, on the other hand — especially if the prices rise when demand rises — would encourage commuters to economize, and thus make the trek over the Mississippi easier for all.

This Common Sense excerpt refers, of course, to an op-ed written last month by Show-Me Institute scholar R.W. Hafer. He takes price theory, which works so well for goods and services in the private sector, and applies it to roads and traffic patterns. It’s a good idea, too often overlooked by people who are used to using roads for free. But, as I pointed out last month in a piece about ticket-scalping, goods that are priced below market value still have a high cost — usually in terms of time spent waiting in line. In this case, it’s a high cost in terms of wading through rush hour traffic congestion. Ultimately, no goods are free. The important thing is not to make prices artificially lower, but determining the most efficient way to distribute real-world costs.

It’s against federal law to charge a toll on roads constructed with federal gax taxes, and the Missouri constitution currently disallows using state funds to build toll roads, so we can’t just slap a few toll booths on existing roads and bridges without somebody passing some legislation first. But getting legislation enacted isn’t our job — we simply conduct research and educate people about our findings, and the value of free-market mechanisms in public policy.

In other words, we traffic in good ideas. So does Paul Jacob.

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Any re-examination of our experiment with term limits is bound to draw the attention of the Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Term Limits organization. Last week, Jeremy Johnson, the U.S. Term Limits director of state government affairs, said in a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article that he was “prepared to run TV and radio ads and ‘do whatever it takes’ to keep Missouri’s legislative term limits in place.”

Claiming to be “one of the largest grass-roots movements in American history,” this organization goes from state to state testifying, lobbying and pontificating about the great benefits of term limits. U.S. Term Limits, however, has no interest in leveling the political playing field by supporting public financing of elections, free media time for candidates or any other type of campaign finance reform that would actually reduce the advantages of incumbency. In fact, their main goal seems to be to make sure that races for the General Assembly are based on one criterion: Money. Or, special interest money, to be exact.

You see, U.S. Term Limits is not the grass-roots organization that it makes itself out to be. It is yet another “Astroturf” organization funded almost entirely by billionaire Howie Rich, a real estate tycoon from New York who has been trying to get states to enact his radical ideas for property rights, education spending and state funding for the past 20 years or so.

Now, I’m the new guy here at the Show-Me Institute, but as far as I know we haven’t taken an official position on term limits. I’m convinced term limits are an excellent idea, but your mileage may vary. One thing I can say for sure, though, is that U.S. Term Limits is not an “Astroturf” organization. During the five-plus years I spent as an editor and webmaster for U.S. Term Limits, I had plenty of exposure to the organization’s membership databases and fundraising efforts — and we had huge broad-based grassroots support from throughout the nation. Including Missouri.

Term limits have gotten quite a bit of attention in the Missouri press recently, as pundits throughout the state blame them for an indecorous Legislature, in which lawmakers squabble and strongarm each other rather than compromise in order to get things done. “Go along to get along” should be the rule of the day, I suppose.

But for those of us who heed the adage (oft attributed to Mark Twain) that “No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session,” a Legislature beset by gridlock and filled with lawmakers who mistrust each other’s motives is a welcome improvement over the usual politics of glad-handing and backroom deals. I don’t want a Legislature that functions smoothly and with minimal dissent as it screws over taxpayers. Passing new legislation should be a difficult, contentious process, laden with scrutiny and debate. It should also be flexible enough so that if lawmakers, in retrospect, realize they’ve passed something that’s simply a bad idea, they can kill it or change it to make it better. If this is what term limits is bringing Missouri, we should be grateful.

Mr. Christianson claims that term limits “have succeeded in increasing the power of capital city lobbyists.” He gives one anecdotal source for this absurd claim, but no evidence. If they’re more powerful, why do surveys show that, consistently, lobbyists are more anxious to repeal term limits than anybody else? Lobbyists can’t enter into cozy long-term relationships with lawmakers who will be gone in a few years. They become less powerful under term limits, not more. If somebody is overhearing term-limited lawmakers talk about their lobbyist affiliations, it’s likely that they just haven’t learned to keep their nascent attempts at mutual back-scratching hushed up and out of sight, like career politicians have.

It’s telling when Mr. Christianson complains that “U.S. Term Limits, however, has no interest in leveling the political playing field by supporting public financing of elections, free media time for candidates or any other type of campaign finance reform that would actually reduce the advantages of incumbency.” These are all measures that limit free speech and entrench the political establishment against dark-horse candidates or outside criticism. It’s a common rejoinder that “money isn’t speech,” but the freedom to speak is worthless if the law prohibits you from buying a soapbox so people will actually hear your message.

Mr. Christianson also seems to object that the founder of U.S. Term Limits is spending “his New York money to influence how people live in some 14 other states,” as though good ideas about policy are dependent on geographic point of origin. The Show-Me Institute is based in Missouri, and we focus our research on Missouri economics and policy. But national groups have a broader purview, and it’s illogical to be wary of an idea simply because it comes from somebody based outside the state. Although I’m no longer an employee of U.S. Term Limits, I recall a column written by Paul Jacob during the last couple of months I worked there. He wrote:

U.S. Term Limits hears this argument about out-of-state influences quite often. Of course, the critics of term limits would like nothing better than for friends of term limits to pack our bags and go home. They don’t have any good arguments to make, so they talk about this out-of-state thing instead. Only when it’s convenient, though; career politicians love out-of-state influences when it adds to their campaign coffers.

In any case, U.S. Term Limits will not back away. We’re a national organization, with members in every state. And, of course, the nation is made up of 50 states, and term limits are a good idea for each and every one of them.

This is true for any good idea — regardless of the source.

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