Opinion: Campaign Finance/Elections Working Group: Issue 2G brings democracy into 21st century
By MATT BENJAMIN, ED BYRNE, ALLYN FEINBERG, MARK MCINTYRE, STEVE POMERANCE, EVAN RAVITZ, TYLER ROMERO, MICHAEL SCHREINER, JOHN SPITZER and VALERIE YATES
We urge city of Boulder voters to vote yes on Ballot Question 2G, which reads, “Shall Sections 38, 45, and 56 of the City Charter be amended pursuant to Ordinance 8274 to allow the Boulder City Council to adopt ordinances that permit use of electronic petitions and to permit on-line electronic signing or endorsement of initiative, referendum, and recall petitions?”
We urge city of Boulder voters to vote yes on Ballot Question 2G, which reads, “Shall Sections 38, 45, and 56 of the City Charter be amended pursuant to Ordinance 8274 to allow the Boulder City Council to adopt ordinances that permit use of electronic petitions and to permit on-line electronic signing or endorsement of initiative, referendum, and recall petitions?”
The city of Boulder’s
Campaign Finance/Elections Working Group unanimously recommended this to
Council, who unanimously voted to put it on the ballot.
(The initiative, referendum
and recall processes are the elements of direct democracy. The initiative is
where a group of citizens gathers enough signatures to put a proposed piece of
legislation on the ballot and asks the voters to approve it. A referendum uses
a similar process to give citizens a chance to vote directly on legislation
already passed by the governing body. And recalls ask the voters if they want
to remove an elected official from office, typically for some serious
malfeasance.)
A
great deal of what made our city and state great was accomplished with ballot
initiatives. Here in Boulder, citizens gathered signatures for, and then
passed, the country’s first voter-approved open space tax and first gay rights
law, among many things we take for granted. On the state level, citizens put on
the ballot and passed the country’s first renewable energy requirements and
first legal marijuana and hemp, among 13 important initiatives in the last 18 years.
Unfortunately, in its more
than a century of existence, these processes have not been significantly
improved for the most part, but have been made more difficult, as with
Colorado’s Amendment 71.
2G
will enable our City Council to bring direct democracy into the 21st century
(finally!) in two ways. First, it will allow circulators to gather signatures
using specially equipped tablets, like those used in Denver and Washington,
D.C., a system called “eSign,” that are synchronized to the state voter
registration database daily. It has already reduced invalid signatures from 34
percent (cited in a recent Camera column) to less than 5 percent.
2G
also allows the Council to implement a system so that citizens can endorse
petitions online.
We’ve been able to register to vote, or change address or party affiliation
online in Colorado (since 2010) and in 35 other states, and have been able to
open bank accounts and make financial transactions online for many years. The
idea is to use similar security and identification by driver’s license or other
state ID to allow citizens to endorse petitions online. If it’s good enough to
give you the right to vote, it’s more than good enough to let you sign a
petition that might get you the right to vote on a citizen initiative.
So it’s clear: This will
not apply to actual voting, which will continue to be done using secret
ballots.
Using an online system will
open up the process to groups without large funds, resulting in a greater
diversity of proposals. It will make it easy to read petitions, because the
full text will be available online. And people will be able to sign 24/7 from
anywhere at any time. It will also prevent you from accidentally signing a
petition twice, and allow you to “unsign” a petition if you change your mind.
An
online system will also allow the City to save the expense of comparing
physical signatures, because identification will be done by driver’s license or
ID, as at the voter registration website, GoVoteColorado.com.
2G will also allow the city
council to eliminate all the problems that have shown up when using paid
petitioners, including forgery, misrepresentation, stealing of petitions,
holding petitions hostage for money, and the paid harassment of petitioners.
Of course, 2G does not
change the ability to continue to use paper petitions; it simply allows the
council to implement these other alternatives, once they are satisfied that
they are secure and reliable.
2G has
been endorsed by the Boulder County Democratic Party, PLAN Boulder County, the
Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, Our Revolution Boulder, and East
Boulder County United, so far. You can learn much more at change.org/p/boulder-city-council-allow-online-petitioning-for-ballot-initiatives and
at our Facebook group, Strengthen Direct Democracy.
2G or not 2G, it’s not
really a question.