On November 4, voters in Jefferson County will decide whether they would like their jurisdiction to become a charter county via adoption of a home rule charter. This would give the people of Jeff Co much more say in how their county operates its own government. Currently, there are just three charter counties in Missouri — Saint Louis, Saint Charles, and Jackson. The independent city of Saint Louis effectively operates that way, too. During the past year, a dedicated group of Jeff Co residents has been working out a charter for the citizens to consider in the coming election. If it is approved, Jeff Co will become a charter county and this document will become the county’s constitution. If it is rejected, Jeff Co will continue as a first-class county governed by the Missouri statutes that dictate how such a county should operated. Continue reading "Thoughts on the Home Rule Charter of Jefferson County" »

It wasn’t too long ago that the “Clean Energy Initiative” was almost dropped from the November election ballot. You may remember this initiative as the law that would require 2 percent of Missouri’s electricity be derived from renewable energy by 2011, with 15 percent being required by 2021 (with at least 2 percent being solar). To top it off, electricity rates can only increase 1 percent each year, somehow. I assume magic and/or sorcery will be involved.

Members of Missourians for Cleaner and Cheaper Energy were ready to do battle with the utility companies until November, but there’s just one problem: The utility companies have yet to oppose the measure. This is an unexpected turn of events. Imagine the MCCE’s shock after finally making it onto the ballot, then finding no opposition. It would be like Clubber Lang not showing up for the end of Rocky III.

According to the Kansas City Star (link via John Combest), the initiative looks as though it will pass without any problems now. If the measure achieves what it promises, Missouri should be in great shape. But I am suspicious that energy prices will rise beyond the 1-percent promissory increase. They may call it something else in the ballot language, but either way, I will have to pay more. I’m sure a bit of the proposed 12-percent rate hike will go toward renewable energy standards.

So, when considering the little energy initiative that could, find out how the law will affect you and whether the advancements it promises are worth the price.

The Show-Me Institute recently unveiled a new online resource: Policy Pulse, an interactive tool that gives users greater flexibility and control in researching the policy areas and legislation that interest them. While the new Missouri Accountability Portal is an outstanding resource for government transparency, we wanted to complement its functionality by creating an easy-to-use search and tracking system that integrates the ability to keep tabs on legislative action with the latest highlights in relevant news and commentary.

So, be sure to check it out and spread the word!

Nicely correlating with our presentation of an upcoming appearance by Steven Levitt, of Freakonomics fame, is an interesting post on his blog of the same name. (Note: Registration is full and closed for Tuesday’s talk, so don’t even think about it.) The “Freakonomics” post discusses a recent survey of economists by Scott Adams on how they feel about the upcoming presidential election. (Note #2: What is the proper way to differently style and cite a book and a blog of the same name? I honestly have no idea.) The survey itself is very interesting and worthwhile to peruse, but my intention here is to point out one small but important error in the demographics part.

The survey and the related discussion both point out the easy fact that economists who list themselves as registered Republican or registered Democrat obviously favor the candidate of their party affiliation. But the discussion then goes to note that economists who are registered independent also favor Obama, by a fairly substantial margin. The problem with the party affiliation question is that it does not account for states that do not require, or even allow, voters to register by party. I often hear people in Missouri say while talking politics that they are “registered this-or-that’s.” I always want to say, and sometimes do say, “No, you’re not, we don’t register by party here.” A more accurate way to phrase the question is, “Do you consider yourself a Democrat, Republican, Indepedent, third-party supporter, or non-voter?”

How the hell can this affect the results? Well … if someone, for a poll or survey, asks me whether I am a registered member of a party, it is perfectly legitimate for me to say no. If they instead ask me whether I consider myself a member of a certain party, I would say yes, and any other answer would be lying. We can be sure that some of the responders to this question are from states like Missouri that do not register by party. As such, people from those states with strong political leanings may have very reasonably chosen “registered independent” as the best of the available options, even though they are not truly independents. With a polling universe heavy on people from acadamia, it is likely that many of those not-really-independents favored the obvious candidate.

The results of the poll are not my point. And the overall survey is very interesting. But doing the demographics in a way that assumes all people register by party, or else officially register as an independent, is erroneous.

An article from today’s Kansas City Star details the close call faced by the group Missourians for Cleaner and Cheaper Energy (aren’t we all), when its proposed “Clean Energy Initiative” was nearly skipped over for the upcoming election. It was almost taken off the November ballot because the Secretary of State had rejected too many petition signatures. Luckily for the concerned group, a Missouri judge agreed with them and ruled that the initiative would be placed back on the ballot.

After spending a summer working for the city of St. Louis Board of Election Commissioners, it is no surprise that a petition could be rejected in the final moments of its processing. Petitions are mostly signed on the street by people in a hurry, so legibility is not their first concern. My handwriting isn’t glorious, of course, but wow — some people’s signatures would have pharmacists scratching their heads. Plus, there is always the percentage of jokers out there who think it’s hilarious to put down fake information. Frankly, I think the odds are very slim that anyone named “McLovin” are in favor of any petition being placed on a ballot.

The Clean Energy Initiative was not the only petition blocked by the Secretary of State for lack of valid signatures. Two petitions dealing with eminent domain abuse were also dropped. To gain a place on the ballot, a petition must have at least as many signatures as 5 percent of the number of votes in the last gubernatorial election, from at least six of the nine congressional districts in Missouri.

This news comes in the same week that Ameren proposed a 12-percent increase in its rates. With today’s energy costs, Missourians need to be aware of any options they have when it comes to their energy sources, and have the opportunity to voice their opinions.

When expressing those opinions, Missourians should make sure to write neatly.

The Kansas City Star has a write-up on a perfect example of why Missouri needs to tighten up the requirements for initiative petitions to amend the constitution. By “tighten up,” I mean “make more difficult.” Missourians will now get to vote on whether or not our utilities will be forced by constitutional law to use more renewable energy in the future. This is a decision that should not be made by voters. It should be made by the utilities, the regulatory agencies that oversee them, and elected officials on the appropriate committees that can study this complicated issue. The idea that voters — the vast majority of whom will have absolutely no idea what the economic implications (good and bad) of this petition are — will make this decision is absurd.

I write this while giving the benefit of the doubt to the people who prepared it and assuming they have at least some idea of what they are talking about. As the 2006 Kansas City light rail initiative petition demonstrated, though, you can’t necessarily make that assumption. Here is one atrocious example:

[The petition] also would limit rate increases associated with moving to renewable energy resources to 1 percent.

So, we are going to mandate all sorts of changes to the companies, but now allow them to pass those costs on to customers. I can’t see anything bad coming from this. No potential for reduced investment in other areas (like nuclear), or reduced wages for employees, or reduced returns to shareholders (such as Joe Sixpack’s IRA), to make up for this legally mandated loss. The idea that you can just force a company to absorb costs and assume there will not be negative consequences is idiocy.

To the defenders of the petition process, I know that the legislature also makes a lot of stupid laws. But, at least in theory, those stupid laws are also changeable — i.e., the village law. These petitions amend our constitution, making it difficult to alter decisions on an issue such as this where the people making this complicated decision will have no idea what they are purporting to do, beyond a feel-good move to renewable energy.

Today, Missouri’s Secretary of State announced that two of the four groups that submitted ballot measures received enough valid signatures on their petitions to be placed on the November 4 ballot.

Gambling loss limits and home health care unions — you made it!

Renewable energy proposals and eminent domain constitutional amendments — better luck next time.

The gambling loss limits proposal would repeal Missouri’s law that limits gambling losses to no more than $500 in a two-hour period. The Post-Dispatch paraphrased a spokesman for the group that sponsored the petition as saying that eliminating loss limits would “help Missouri casinos compete against those in neighboring states” and secure an estimated $100 million toward public schools. Show-Me Daily has covered this issue before. As for the home health care union proposal, annual costs are estimated to exceed $510,560.

This week’s edition of the St. Louis Business Journal contained an interesting, “Political Pull,” naming and discussing some of Missouri’s biggest contributors to the Obama and McCain campaigns. Between the two candidates, they amassed a combined $4,075,353. Missouri is not only a bellwether state, but also a crucial tossup state for the 2008 presidential election.

Reading this article, and thinking about the colossal figures being given to both campaigns, I could not help but remember some of the campaign finance reform that had occurred in Missouri. In their final hour of session back in May, Missouri lawmakers passed legislation repealing Missouri’s campaign contribution limits. Just in the governor’s race alone, candidates are expected to raise between $8 and $12 million. This law, which was went into effect on August 28, could leave many state candidates screaming “Show me the money!”

There is much dissonance within political ideologies when it comes to campaign finance. Just last February, two Missouri state senators each wrote completely opposite bills — one throwing out campaign contribution limits, another pushing a plan for public campaign financing. Does this cross the lines of our First Amendment, or do limits really clean up our government? I would love for you to post your ideas.

A few weeks ago, I pointed out that cities across the state were creating a war chest to try to prevent Missouri’s voters from ending the eminent domain abuse that currently threatens our right to keep what rightfully belongs to us. Shortly thereafter, the secretary of state ruled that, despite the hundreds of thousands of signatures turned in by Missouri Citizens for Property Rights (MO-CPR) in support of their proposed constitutional amendments, the issue would not be on the November ballot.

Last week, MO-CPR filed a lawsuit challenging the secretary of state’s decision and asking the court to allow citizens to have their say on the issue. And, yesterday, the Missouri Municipal League — an organization that collects taxpayer dollars and purports to advance the interests of Missouri’s local governments — moved to block MO-CPR’s lawsuit.

A few choice tidbits from the Municipal League’s filing should allow citizens to evaluate the merits of its “concerns”:

• The league’s members argue that they should be allowed to intervene because they “have exercised the power of eminent domain for the purpose of acquiring private property for conveyance to private entities for commercial or other development to fight blight and other decay, and it is anticipated that they will continue to do so in the future.”
• The league opposes the amendments because they might require local governments to pay “just compensation for local land use regulations.” In other words, the cities would have to pay you if they passed a regulation that decreased the value of your property. While not included in their filing, a previous Municipal League analysis of the proposed amendments also worried that they would “significantly increase the amounts of condemnation awards” to citizens being dispossessed of their homes and businesses.
• The league is concerned that the amendments would require cities to get a court order before they destroyed or condemned property that they thought was a nuisance. While not mentioned in the league’s filing, the amendment would also require cities to give owners an opportunity to fix the problems themselves. I mean, why in the world should cities allow property owners the chance to remove the government’s pretext for giving their property to someone else? Honestly.
• The league doesn’t like that the amendments would “limit the use of eminent domain to the State or political subdivisions whose officials are directly responsible to elected officials.” This would, of course, allow voters to hold those responsible for using eminent domain accountable for their actions — a radical departure from current law, which allows many unelected, unaccountable organizations to take away private property.
• Despite justifying its involvement in part by complaining that confirming the number of proper signatures will be expensive, the league calls for the court to recount all 400,000+ signatures, not just the ones challenged by MO-CPR.

MO-CPR issued a press release in response to the Municipal League’s filing. Among the excellent points made in the release, my favorite is where Bevis Shock (a member of the Show-Me Institute’s board of directors) asks, “I wonder if the politicians who approved this legal action have considered how many residents of their cities signed our petition?”

Today, the Post-Dispatch editors chastised the leading Republican gubernatorial candidates for turning the Missouri ethanol mandate into a major campaign issue. The editors may well be correct that “the mandate makes very little difference in the bank accounts of drivers, grocery shoppers, or even farmers.” However, contention over the mandate might provide a worthy outlet for opinions about larger issues, such as the government’s involvement in ethanol production and the appropriateness of direct intervention into other markets.

As a practical matter, the future of the current ethanol mandate will not have a large effect on the commodity prices Missourians face. Our study, which was a narrowly focused rebuttal of another study, estimates a considerable, but not overwhelming, price tag of $29 per Missouri driver per year. The P-D suggests that “for drivers, there’s probably only a tiny savings.” Regardless of whether the mandate is a net positive or net negative, we both agree that the effect is relatively small. After all, the legislation only touches statewide consumption of globally traded commodities in the event that their associated market prices are lower than those of conventional gas.

Even so, the current discussion is anything but frivolous. The ethanol savings figures given by the Missouri Corn Merchandising Council are patently false. Further, the use of coercive intervention into a fully functional market raises legitimate doubts. The Republican candidates obliviously feel that they can effectively offer different shades of conservatism through a real — although perhaps not earth shattering — debate. Whether their attempts to differentiate themselves will pay off remains to be seen, but we can’t blame them for trying.

If we can make it there … you know the rest.

I am not actually positive that the Manhattan Institutue is in Manhattan, but let’s assume it is. Anyway, its legal scholar, Walter Olson (from the famous overlawyered.com), has a great essay about the strange desire of business groups to favor elections for judges. He includes commentary about the Show-Me Institute study of the Missouri Plan, written by Hall and Sobel this past spring, and links to it. Please check out his commentary and our study. The only small addition I would make to his point is to add Southern Illinois as an example of a state in which elected judges and huge tort verdicts coincide.

When school districts need more money, they ask their voters, right?

Well, that’s the idea. But, in some instances, it might be more of a demand. If a school district fails to pass a proposed tax levy, it can go back on the ballot in the next election. So, if a district is persistent, odds are it’ll get passed eventually.

According to Kelli Hopkins, an attorney and director of education policy for the Missouri School Boards Association, there are no limits on how many times a bond issue or tax levy proposal can be put on the ballot, though they do require different majorities to pass in different months.

So, is it a common tactic to wear down voters and use brute force to pass financial issues?

Continue reading "If at First You Don’t Succeed …" »

Partisanship has long been divorced from most school elections in the United States.

In fact, all school board elections in Missouri are nonpartisan, according to Kelli Hopkins, a director of education policy for the Missouri School Boards Association. Board candidates don’t run as Republicans or Democrats.

Theoretical papers argue that nonpartisan school board members are beholden to all citizens, not just those of a particular party, and that without partisanship there’s a wide variety of candidate choice — not just Republicans and Democrats.

To even further divorce all school elections from partisanship, districts rarely hold elections in November. Many elections run in February, April, June, or August, but most often in April — a month least linked with partisan elections.

“The separation of school board elections from general elections was a deliberate attempt by Progressive-era reformers to reduce partisan influence in the school election process,” write Ann Allen and David Plank in a 2005 paper for the Politics of Education Association.

Still, there is controversy surrounding both the timing of school elections and school board candidate partisanship. Some have argued that partisan school board elections would bring up lagging turnout. Others, that holding school elections in November would do the same. The question is, is it worth it?

These arguments have some serious implications for school district governance. But would partisanship or November school elections do what advocates say? Would turnout increase dramatically?

Continue reading "Remarriage?" »

Let’s talk about turnout.

Specifically, let’s talk about turnout in Missouri school district elections. And not the usual rant about how it’s shamefully low (it is), but about what affects it.

For more than a month now, I’ve been working to create a database, which will eventually be publicly available, that details voter turnout in Missouri school district elections. Out of the number of eligible voters in any given district, how many show up to express an opinion? The answer? Usually 20 percent or less.

The real answer? Well, we just don’t know.

Continue reading "The Ins and Outs (Or Ups and Downs) of Turnout" »

No, that’s not an oxymoron. Seriously. …

When political units are small and decentralized, competitive pressure can create market-like outcomes. It’s imperfect, because consumers — i.e., citizens — have to purchase bundles of services rather than purchasing each service separately. However, it’s much better than a large, centralized polity. The key is that the cost of switching to a new political jurisdiction is low. The smaller the polity, the smaller the cost when everything else is equal.

The Post-Dispatch reports on this sort of competition at work in Missouri. The small town of Albany has passed an ordinance legalizing the use of golf carts within city limits. Each golf cart must have an attached seven-foot orange flag, and an annual permit costing $15. Why, exactly was this ordinance passed? Well…

City Administrator Derek Brown said several residents asked the city to legalize the use of golf carts, saying the practice would be cheaper than traveling around town in a car.

It seems gas prices have played a large role in this, but the point is that residents asked for it, and got it. Sure, this sort of thing happens on the federal level, too, but the difference in this case is that residents who don’t like it can leave at a much lower cost. If they do leave, the city’s coffers will begin to dwindle, pressuring city officials to change the law — or, perhaps, become a niche city for golf carr lovers.

This sort of system is exactly what the founders had in mind with federalism. A central government is better apt to provide a few things like defense and dispute resolution between the smaller political units. At the same time, smaller competing polities, like states, counties, and municipalities, provide a somewhat competitive market for government. This does a better job of providing each citizen with the bundle of policies they want. The problem seems to be preventing the transfer of political power from state and local governments to the national government.

The Post-Dispatch reports that Chrysler is closing its minivan plant in Fenton, laying off 2,400 workers. Political Fix has the responses of several prominent politicians, including this from Missouri Rep. Sam Page:

My sympathies go out to the employees who lost jobs today and their families. These men and women were hard workers, who made a good product. But they, like many Americans, have fallen victim to higher gas prices and a bad economy. They have suffered because of a government unable or unwilling to fix this problem.

We must now look forward at bringing new industry to our state. Missouri has given Chrysler $32 million in tax incentives to keep its plants operating here. After the loss of up to 2,800 good-paying, benefit-providing jobs, it is clear that that investment has not been returned. Instead, we need to be welcoming companies committed to investing in Missouri’s economy.

I have to commend Page for admitting that the government is perhaps incapable of fixing a problem. All too often, this lesson seems to be lost in political matters. In this particular case, it is very unlikely that the government can fix the problems posed by the increasing scarcity of energy. In fact, the cure is likely worse than the disease. Any incentives that the government can muster to spur innovation in energy provision are likely to be minuscule in comparison to the incentives already in the marketplace for such innovations, and the marketplace doesn’t discriminate based on politics.

Another lesson is to be learned from Page’s quote: Tax incentives for individual businesses are a bad idea. There is no guarantee that the business will stay in the area once the tax incentives are granted and no guarantee that the state will pick the best candidate for the incentive. Furthermore, a lower tax rate for everyone is a much more effective means of stimulating growth because it encourages greater productivity and attracts entrepreneurs that the state might not have even been aware of, let alone tried to pursue. Rather than handing out tax incentives, lowering taxes would be a great way to “welcome companies committed to investing in Missouri’s economy.” Hopefully, this is what Page has in mind.

InBev’s attempt to purchase Anheuser-Busch has caused a big stir in the news and politics lately. Justin and Patrick have already substantively commented on the issue.

Referring to Anheuser-Busch, the News Tribune quotes Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill:

"[...] This is a company that’s been profitable year in and year out and has provided good middle-class jobs in America. It feels like to too many people in our country right now that these are the kinds of jobs that are going away."

This seems a bit confused. It assumes that if InBev does successfully purchase Anheuser-Busch, it will move the production facilities overseas. This isn’t necessarily the case. In fact, in the same article, InBev CEO Carlos Brito is contends:

"What we’re proposing basically is really to take an American brand, so successful as Budweiser, and unleashing that to the world via our distribution system," Brito said.

Taken at face value, this quote suggests that there is no reason to assume that InBev wants to move the production of Anheuser-Busch beer overseas. Even if this were right, the idea that the move would cause job losses to the U.S. is still misguided. A certain Frenchman is always relevant. The problem lies in focusing only on what can be easily seen — the jobs lost overseas. A careful analysis will also reveal what is unseen.

If InBev were to move Anheuser-Busch’s production facilities overseas, suddenly a large amount of consumption goods in the U.S. would be imported rather than produced domestically. If this occurs, the importer (in this case, InBev) can do one of two things with the U.S. dollars it receives: invest in U.S. assets or purchase export goods. To the degree that the former occurs, domestic industries are able to expand and create new jobs with the increased investment. In the latter case, export industries see increased demand and respond by ramping up production, creating new jobs.

The net impact of the move overseas on job creation is ambiguous without empirical data, but it isn’t obviously negative (or positive, for that matter) because there are effects running in both directions. The likely long run effect would be minor, if there is one at all. This is assuming that all else is held equal, of course. Without any evidence to suggest that the net effect would be negative, inferring that it would be negative is a bit rash.

One might argue that this is all well and good for an entire country, but what is at stake in this case are the jobs of Missourians — or, more accurately, St. Louisians. This argument is also misguided. The above analysis applies no matter where the border of the domestic region is defined, whether it be St. Louis or your own backyard.

This article addresses the issue of women and discrimination in the General Assembly. It sounds like some women legislators have heard obnoxious comments from their male colleagues, who should cut it out. (Although I’m dubious that sensitivity training is going to have the desired effect.)

I agree that respectful treatment of women is important. But I disagree that some minimum percentage of all representatives needs to be female, as is implied by statements like these:

In Missouri, women hold four of the eight statewide elected offices — secretary of state, state auditor, state treasurer and one of the two U.S. Senate seats. But of the 197 state legislative positions, only 39 of the seats are held by women. Ironically, that near 20 percent representation of women is lower than the 25 percent mandated in the Iraqi constitution for the minimum number of women in its representative body.

First of all, what is the point of the comparison with Iraq? Since when do we take our ideas of model government from war zones in the Middle East? If we’re supposed to conclude that as a result women are worse off in Missouri than in Iraq, that’s crazy, because women here enjoy safety, stability, and many other benefits attendant on U.S. residence — benefits that far outweigh whatever gains follow from the additional women in the Iraqi legislature.

Still, you could argue that sex quotas in legislatures are intrinsically good, and it just happens to be one thing that Iraq has gotten right and Missouri has gotten wrong. But does anyone really want to enforce strict sex ratios in other occupations? Most ballet dancers are women, even though you can’t perform the great ballets without men. And this article about employment notes that men are much less likely than women to go into nursing — only about 10 percent of nursing students are male — despite the fact that the demand for nurses is growing. In fact, because women outnumber men in thriving sectors like education and health care, they suffer less from recessions that hit other industries harder:

From last November through this April, American women aged 20 and up gained nearly 300,000 jobs, according to the household survey of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). At the same time, American men lost nearly 700,000 jobs.

Missouri women should have the opportunity to go into state government if they want to put up with annoying constituents, boring committee meetings, hectic schedules, and looming term limits. But we shouldn’t consign some arbitrary number of women to that fate.

From time to time, it’s a good Idea to step back from deep, introspective analysis of state and local issues and remind ourselves just how ridiculous our elected officials can be.

Today’s example of government immaturity, as detailed by the Post-Dispatch in this article, started over a provision surreptitiously placed into legislation last session that is beginning to raise a number of major concerns.

The bill in question, SB765, allows landowners to skirt county zoning provisions by holding a public vote to establish their land as an independent village. The problem with this, though, is that the vote need only reflect the opinion of those residing inside the areas in question. This means, of course, that a single landowner can vote to make his property a village.

While establishing your own city may seem like a fine exercise in independent politics, it raises taxation issues with the counties themselves and sets a frightening precedent for private taking of land. For these reasons, representatives from districts affected by the rise of these new villages attempted to have the law repealed, claiming that the provision was snuck into a bill prior to a vote before the language could be reviewed.

These reports, though, have been denied, and all attempts to repeal the bill have been stalled.

So, proponents of repeal have threatened to put a hold on passing house bills until the bill is let through.

While I won’t go so far as to call this an endorsement of the Unicam, you would hope that our elected officials would take enough time to correct a provision opposed by county officials across the state.

You’d hope.

Supporters of Ward Connerly’s Civil Rights Initiative — which would end race-based affirmative action programs in Missouri — are increasing their efforts to solicit the 140,000 signatures necessary for a November ballot position.

The Kansas City Star blogs on the topic here. It’s amazing how much liberty they take in editorializing their coverage, by the way.

My favorite sentence: “Programs that could disappear include race-specific scholarships at public universities such as the University of Missouri-Kansas City [...]“

Reread that sentence again. Was a society that judged people based on the color of their skin one of the goals of Dr. Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement? Imagine if the University of Missouri offered scholarships to white students only. Or, if the University offers race-specific scholarships, then why not create race-specific bathrooms as well? How far we’ve fallen from the original ideals of civil rights.

And, of course, the thing that is most ironic about affirmative action to me is that its strongest supporters are often upper-middle-class families with “white guilt” — the same class of people that affirmative action programs are supposed to, in theory, protect minorities from in the first place.

Personally, I think that this comment on the Star’s blog says it best.

I’ve intended for the past couple of weeks to respond to Justin Hauke’s last attack on the initiative process — specifically, his praise for a bill that would outlaw paying petitioners based on the number of signatures they gather, under the rubric of "preventing fraud." I’ve kept putting it off, though, both because other projects keep crowding my attention, and because I wanted to make sure to hone a particularly good response — initiative & referendum is worthy of a vigorous and comprehensive defense.

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 controversy over seating Democratic delegates awarded in the Florida and Michigan primaries has escalated to the point where it seems that pundits are throwing out ideas at random, only to have them be shot down a few moments later. I usually try to avoid these discussions because of the vacuum of common sense that usually emerges from them, but one idea recently caught my attention.

According to CNN, both Florida and Michigan have considered mail-in ballots as a method for tabulating votes if their respective primaries are to be redone. This method of vote tabulation — already used in Oregon for all elections and as the primary mechanism for absentee voting in most other states — has a number of benefits that are specifically tailored to the current democratic situation. An all-mail primary would cost considerably less than a traditional one, and as recognized by Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean, such an exercise would ease the balloting process for all:

"Every voter gets a ballot in the mail. It’s comprehensive. You get to
vote if you’re in Iraq or in a nursing home," he said on CBS’ "Face the
Nation."

Additionally, a mail-in primary could lead to more attention for the process within Missouri. In February, state Representative Jake Zimmerman introduced House Bill 2088, which would establish an all-mail election system for all elections that take place within the state. Currently, the bill has not been referred to a committee, and as reported by Suburban Journals, there is little confidence of it being given serious consideration. However, as the resident intern in favor of election reform, I’m hoping that any attention given to mail-in balloting by Florida and Michigan leads Missouri lawmakers to reconsider it as an electoral method.

I don’t want to beat a dead horse, so I will be brief.

While I certainly agree with many of Eric Dixon’s points, direct democracy is not as rosy as he seems to think.

Surely, Mr. Dixon recognizes the potential for fraud with a paid signature-gathering initiative approach. The bill under consideration in the General Assembly does not limit the initiative process. It only outlaws this particular type of signature-gathering technique. How is preventing fraud an assault on democracy?

And the initiative process has been responsible for terrible legislation, particularly in California, where direct democracy is king. California passed Propositions 39 and 98 through teachers’-union-led initiative processes that mandated minimum K–12 education funding (40 percent of the state budget!) and eliminated the supermajority requirement for passing new school bonds. Most tax increases in California have been passed through initiatives, because the state requires a supermajority legislative vote (only three states have such beneficial requirements) for all tax increases. And while many people seem to love Proposition 13 (also an initiative bill), I would argue that the bill did far more to insulate existing homeowners than it did to lower property taxes across the state (making the state impossibly expensive for an outsider like me).

In Missouri, the initiative process also tends to be the path of choice for social conservatives (and progressives) with controversial ballot issues.

Should Missouri get rid of the initiative process? Not necessarily. But we should definitely make sure that the signatures that are collected are valid.

I want to follow up on Justin Hauke’s and David Stokes’ entries about the initiative process. Primarily, I take issue with Justin’s worry that "The initiative process tends to encourage interest-group politics. If a small group of committed people band together, they can pass some pretty stupid laws." While this is certainly true, I have to point out that committed groups of legislators pass laws that are far more stupid, with much greater regularity. So, while the initiative process certainly doesn’t guarantee good results, the real question is how those results stack up to the record of legislators themselves.

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.

The initiative bill Dave Roland commented on several weeks ago has been “perfected” in the House and is nearing passage. Apparently its Senate counterpart is also on the fast track for passage.

Some proponents of direct democracy see the initiative process as an additional check on legislative power. The argument being that if a majority of citizens aren’t happy with the laws their legislature is enacting, they can ban together to pass laws themselves instead — a kind of “citizen’s arrest,” if you will.

I tend to be more cynical and find myself (shockingly) agreeing with Dave Stokes on the topic. The initiative process tends to encourage interest-group politics. If a small group of committed people band together, they can pass some pretty stupid laws. And the current legislation under consideration does nothing to eliminate the initiative process or curtail "democracy."

But maybe democracy’s just a sham, anyway.

Here’s another situation in which economists are wrong and your vote does count. You might someday want to run for office:

Public records show Olivo, who is now running for Congress, has never voted in an election, in Missouri or elsewhere. [...]

"I got caught up in the wave of apathy that has affected many of my generation," Olivo, 31, said. "I’m the first to admit that I was wrong for not voting."

Hits and misses from around Missouri newspapers, blogs, and elsewhere today:

• Education Week has a story on how the increased enrollment in charter schools across the country has hurt enrollment at Catholic schools. We have certainly seen this in St. Louis, with the controversial decision to close several city parishes and schools in recent years. I think this is one of the things that just happens. As parents get a less expensive (free), quality option for their children’s educations, many low-income people are going to take that. Change is often good, but nobody said it was always easy.
• The Arch City Chronicle is reporting about a bill that would take away the driver’s licenses of teenagers not in school. While I certainly understand the use of incentives to keep kids in school, and none is more powerful than a driver’s license, I would recommend to you Eric Dixon’s post the other day on unintended consequences. A fairly obvious unintended consequence of this bill would be to limit the employment opportunities for teenagers who have left school. It would be limited to jobs along public transit routes, which don’t require a car. Now, that may be a decent number of jobs, but further limiting opportunities for people who are already limiting their own opportunities might not be such a good thing.
• Missourinet has a story on the Missouri House of Representatives moving to restore the deductibility of property taxes for outstate taxpayers who work in Missouri. This is an excellent, and unanimous, move by the House, and if it passes overall it will head off retaliatory moves by other states. This is very important to me, because I commute here to work from Singapore.
• Finally, in a contender for stupidest idea of the year, the Post-Dispatch is reporting that Illinois is considering lowering its voting age to 17. However, an even worse idea is contained within the article:

Alex Koroknay-Palicz, executive director of the D.C.-based National Youth Rights Association, said his group is pushing for the voting age to be 16 across the country.

"(They’re) informed, active and intelligent, and they deserve a voice in our democracy just as much as everyone else," he said.

Koroknay-Palicz said 16- and 17-year-olds are typically more stable than an 18-year-old. Eighteen-year-olds have more on their plate — starting college, getting a job or moving away from home, he said.

"The trouble is, though, that when you give people the right to vote at 18, it’s actually a bad time to start voting because you’re going off to college or getting on with your life," Koroknay-Palicz said.

Seriously, is this a joke? Is there really a National Youth Rights Association? How are they funded? Do they get an allowance from other lobbying groups? As for being informed, active, and intelligent, when I was 16 I was none of the three, and I now work at a think tank!

If you don’t have a voice in how your own house is run, you don’t need a voice in how the country is run. This guy’s statements remind me of the end of Wild In The Streets, after the 20-year-old dictator insults a kid, and the 10-year old looks in the camera and says, "We’re gonna kill everyone over 12." (And yes, I deserve enormous praise for not only being able to reference this camp classic, but to paraphrase it from memory despite only seeing it once about 15 years ago.)

Alex’s statements just get more absurd. His arguments that 18 is a bad time to start voting could just as easily serve as a reason to take voting rights away from senior citizens. Switch "…starting college, getting a job, or moving away from home," to "retiring, collecting social security, and moving into an assisted care facility," and wham!, it now makes the point that there is too much change in your 70s for you to vote. Just unbelievable.

I can’t let Nick’s post in favor of campaign finance reform pass without rebuttal. It can be easy to miss the connection between free speech and direct contributions to campaign efforts, so it’s understandable that many people don’t think of it as a free speech issue. That aside, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA, aka McCain-Feingold) was one of the most blatantly unconstitutional pieces of legislation ever to pass the initial scrutiny of all three branches of government. State-based efforts to regulate campaign funding aren’t as wide-ranging, but are still almost universally terrible ideas.

Nick assures us that "The goal of campaign finance reform isn’t to destroy the 1st Amendment," which is undoubtedly true, but beside the point — destruction of the First Amendment is not the goal, it’s a side effect. Even though killing free speech isn’t the overt purpose of campaign finance reform, we can’t judge legislation solely on what it intends. The need to ferret out unintended consequences is one of the most important lessons of economics.

But really, the most obvious restrictions aren’t even unintended. The BCRA explicitly banned broadcast ads mentioning the name of a federal candidate from appearing within 60 days of a general election, or 30 days of a primary. This notwithstanding the fact that the importance of unrestricted political speech is a primary reason we have the First Amendment in the first place. And, as Jonathan Rauch pointed out, "Educating voters influences them, which is the whole point. ‘Electioneering’ is not distinguishable from other forms of political speech, even in principle."

The real driving force of the campaign finance reform movement has been politicians who want to be protected from competition. Make no mistake, campaign finance reform doesn’t level the playing field; it stacks the deck even further in favor of incumbents by restricting ordinary people from speaking out against those in power — those who already have plenty of exposure in the public eye on their own terms. Ryan Sager of the New York Sun has it exactly right: "Money has never been the issue. Cleansing our speech of impure thoughts about politicians is the real agenda."

Fans of campaign finance reform inevitably respond that "money isn’t speech," or that nobody is prevented from speaking, it’s just that groups are prevented from buying airtime. Semantic issues aside, I don’t know of anybody who ever claimed that money is speech. Money buys many things, and one of them is access to an audience. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Without the freedom to pursue such an audience, the freedom to speak is practically worthless. How much regulation will it take before advocates of campaign finance reform come to their senses and realize that the laws they favor promote real, actual government-mandated censorship? How about a law banning personal conversations that mention a political candidate within 60 days of an election? Maybe not: "You’re still free to speak. You can stand inside a locked closet and shout about whatever you want, to your heart’s content. Relax — the First Amendment is just fine."

For those who still think something needs to be done to "fix" political speech, there are solutions available that don’t happen to tear parts of the Constitution to shreds. Roger Pilon, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies, provides a guide for real reform (emphasis added):

[F]or some time now we have heard a chorus of calls in Congress and in the nation for campaign finance "reforms" that would almost certainly compromise political speech and hence the First Amendment. At a general level, I join that chorus, for there is something fundamentally wrong with the way political campaigns in America today are financed. But the reforms I would advocate would take us in a very different direction than that charted by most others in the chorus. Indeed, many of the problems that most reformers see in our present arrangements are the products of earlier reforms. Thus, if we are serious about addressing those problems we should look first to those earlier reforms. Far from needing further restrictions on political speech, we need fewer. Deregulation not only would be consistent with the Constitution but would solve the problems regulation brought into being. Here, as in so many other areas, the Founders had the better of it when they set us on a course of freedom rather than regulation. [...]

There is a measure, however, that will withstand judicial scrutiny, the aptly-named "Doolittle bill," introduced in the 105th Congress as H.R. 965, the "Citizen Legislature and Political Freedom Act," sponsored by Rep. John Doolittle and co-sponsored by 70 other members of the House. In essence, that bill would remove the campaign contribution limits now in place and require instead that candidates and parties promptly report their financial transactions to the Federal Election Commission for disclosure to the public. The bill would, in short, deregulate the process and open it up to the public. Its simplicity is its virtue.

I’ve already spent much more time on this blog entry than I should have, so I’ll stop here for now, and let my colleague David Stokes tell everybody tomorrow why public funding of elections is one of the worst ideas under the sun.

The Post-Dispatch ran an article this morning about a pair of bills recently introduced in the General Assembly that would seek to drastically change Missouri’s policies on political contributions for state contests. The first, introduced by Senate Majority Leader Charlie Shields (R–St. Joseph) seeks to eliminate the contribution limits established by Missouri voters after a 1994 petition. The second, brought by Sen. Jeff Smith (D–St. Louis) takes a more populist view by instead promoting a system of public funding revolving around a number of small donations.

Shield’s bill is the latest in a decade-long back-and-forth debate between supporters and opponents of campaign finance limits that has already seen a U.S. Supreme Court decision (that helped pave the way for a certain piece of federal legislation that I’m rather fond of), and a Missouri Supreme Court decision. Removing limits, supporters claim, will actually increase transparency by eliminating the need for wealthy donors to shuffle money through PACs. This argument, though, has been echoed for years. Much more exciting, in this author’s opinion, is Sen. Smith’s idea:

"[Smith] wants to ‘draw a contrast’ between special interest-funded campaigns
and his model, where candidates would get public funding if they
garnered a certain number of $5 donations."

The goal of campaign finance reform isn’t to destroy the 1st Amendment (although this may be disputed by some of my colleagues). Instead, limits exist in order to ensure that the voices of a few with extraordinary means don’t drown out the words of others who can’t (financially) shout as loud. Smith’s bill hopes to correct this disparity by giving those who have proven their support through small donations the public financing they need to compete with candidates receiving the backing of a few massive donors. Although public financing has often been disputed for its ineffectiveness in campaigns, I think the populist nature of Smith’s bill does more to promote the idea of free speech than the removal of any limits ever could.

It’s a good idea. It’s a shame even he doesn’t think it will pass.

This morning, it was all supposed to be over. Two candidates were promised to rise above the masses and act as standard-bearers going into the convention. The country was supposed to have spoken in a collective voice of approval, and the long trek of candidacy was to begin.

Turns out we’re right where we were yesterday, only it’s Missouri — so the weather’s different.

The frontloading of primaries by a number of states (including Missouri) to form a Super-Duper Tuesday backfired yesterday, as the collective need for half the country to stay relevant in the competition did nothing more than confirm the only fact that we already knew: this election isn’t going to be over until the first Tuesday in November.

In fact, Time has posted an interesting article that claims rather than keep states relevant, the frontloading of primaries onto a single, oppressively early date has actually taken them out of the decisionmaking process (emphasis added):

[A]ll the big states that rushed into the void to hold early primaries
may turn out to have spoken too soon. Instead of making themselves
kingmakers, their divided result has abdicated the power to the states
that waited their turn. The next major contests include Maryland and
Virginia, and then Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania, followed by what could
be a slow and grueling crawl to the convention.

Ohio and Texas this year will go to the polls to select their candidates on March 4, making them — rather than the 25 states and territories that polled yesterday — the new drivers of this campaign season.

The ironic thing, though, is that these contests on March 4 are falling on almost exactly the same date that the Missouri caucuses fell (March 7 in 1996 and 2000) before the state switched to a primary system so Missouri voters would have more of a say on the national stage. Would Missouri voters have exerted their influence with a mightier hand if they hadn’t been swept up in frontloading fever?

Primaries shouldn’t all be on one day, they should be spread to allow candidates to legitimately campaign throughout the entire country, while allowing all states a chance to contribute their legitimate say. Frontloading alienates voters, lengthens the final stage of the campaign to levels of ridiculous length and expense, and forces candidates to present themselves in an unrealistic fashion in the quest for one day’s bounty of delegates. There has been much talk this week about Missouri’s status as a bellwether state. Let’s hope that state officials keep this status in mind when scheduling future contests so that the Show-Me spirit doesn’t get lost in the pack.