You remember how the Republicans used to say let the people decide on LGBTQ+ rights, how they were gun-ho on referendums well that all changed with Kansas now they are running scared.
The Ridiculous Reason A Michigan Board Said No To A State Abortion Referendum
Republicans on the panel blocked the measure after Michiganders showed their support for it en masse.
HuffPost
By Sara Boboltz
September 1, 2022
A Michigan state elections panel voted along party lines Wednesday to block a proposal that could enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution.The reason? A typography issue.
Words were not misspelled ― nay, there was simply not sufficient spacing between some of them, apparently. (In graphic design, the space between characters is called “kerning.”)
The Michigan Board of State Canvassers deadlocked over whether to allow the abortion proposal to appear on the November ballot after a right-wing group challenged the proposal, which had been organized by the pro-choice group Reproductive Freedom for All.
The right-wing group, called Citizens to Support MI Women and Children, challenged the entire effort because, they said, minimal spacing in the text of the proposed amendment language reduced it to “gibberish.”
The canvassing board’s two Republican members voted to block the proposal, while two Democrats voted in favor of allowing it to appear before the voting public. A staff report from the state bureau of elections, overseen by Michigan’s Democratic secretary of state, had recommended approving the petition.
The drive to cement abortion rights in the Michigan constitution revealed a groundswell of support in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 24 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Whoa we can’t have people telling us what to do what a crazy idea! The orange haired guy must tell us.
GOP escalates fight against citizen-led ballot initiatives
AP News
By David A. Lieb
September 3, 2022
Hundreds of thousands of people signed petitions this year backing proposed ballot initiatives to expand voting access, ensure abortion rights and legalize recreational marijuana in Arizona, Arkansas and Michigan.Yet voters might not get a say because Republican officials or judges have blocked the proposals from the November elections, citing flawed wording, procedural shortcomings or insufficient petition signatures.
At the same time, Republican lawmakers in Arkansas and Arizona have placed constitutional amendments on the ballot proposing to make it harder to approve citizen initiatives in the future.
The Republican pushback against the initiative process is part of a several-year trend that gained steam as Democratic-aligned groups have increasingly used petitions to force public votes on issues that Republican-led legislatures have opposed. In reliably Republican Missouri, for example, voters have approved initiatives to expand Medicaid, raise the minimum wage and legalize medical marijuana. An initiative seeking to allow recreational pot is facing a court challenge from an anti-drug activist aiming to knock it off the November ballot.
The nerve of those people expecting the people to know what they want.
In Arizona, the primarily Republican-appointed Supreme Court recently blocked a proposed constitutional amendment that would have extended early voting and limited lobbyist gifts to lawmakers. The measure also would have specifically prohibited the Legislature from overturning the results of presidential elections, which some Republicans had explored after then- President Donald Trump’s loss in 2020.
After a lower court initially ruled the measure could appear on the November ballot, Arizona’s high court instructed the judge to reconsider. Then it upheld a subsequent ruling throwing out enough petition signatures to prevent the initiative from qualifying for the ballot.
The Republicans gerrymander the districts making it so that the Republicans can’t lose, they have made it harder for voters to vote with overbearing restrictions on voters IDs. And now they are trying to block referendums. They do not like voters, they want the party to tell people how to vote… just like Russia and China does.
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