Orange County Register: GOP effort for initiaitve referendum failing

GOP flagging in effort to reverse initiative change

by Martin Wisckol, Politics reporter

The Orange County Register

November 3rd, 2011, 3:43 pm 

The Democratic Legislature drew its share of flak earlier this year when it changed the rules for statewide ballot measures, forcing them off primary ballots and onto consolidated general election ballots. A group of Republicans launched a referendum effort to ask voters to return initiatives to the primary ballots, but the Sacramento Bee is reporting that they’ve failed to raised enough money to collect the 505,000 signatures needed to qualify the measure for the ballot.

The average Republican is more likely to vote in the primary than the average Democrat, who often tend to wait for the general election to cast a ballot. Democrats – including Gov. Jerry Brown – argued that the change was for the best because it consolidated ballot measures in the elections with the highest turnout overall. Republicans complain the change was simply political gamesmanship.

But while Republicans seems to be advancing with two other ballot proposals, the effort to put initiatives back on the primary ballot looks dead unless someone with a wheelbarrow full of dough comes along soon.
“As of right now, there has not been enough financial support for it to really get off the ground,” Chuck Bell, the GOP political attorney who filed the referendum papers, told the Bee.

Meanwhile, a GOP-backed measure proposing restrictions on union and corporate campaign contributions is in the process of having its petition signatures counted, and a GOP-backed measure to throw out the newly drawn state Senate district lines is approaching its Nov. 13 deadlines for submitting petitions.