For much of his career as a citizen activist, Paul Jacob was closely associated with the cause of term limits, a subject that still

Two bills passed the Oklahoma House subcommittee on elections and redistricting yesterday that would affect the initiative and referendum process there.
HB 3350, from Rep. Randy Terrill, R-Oklahoma City, would expand the petitioning time from 90 days to one year and specifically outlaws harassment of petitioners, both of which would increase citizen participation. The measure […]

Forbes magazine publisher Steve Forbes, who inquired in a recent Forbes editorial about the Oklahoma 3, “Has North Korea Annexed Oklahoma?,” made a visit to Oklahoma this week. Following a meeting at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, Forbes told Brandon Dutcher, OCPA’s vice president for policy, that he still has trouble believing Oklahoma’s attorney […]

Fighting for the right to petition our government isn’t just the cry in Oklahoma these days. It’s under attack all across the country. Sadly, the Nebraska Assembly this week overrode the Governor’s veto of a bill that will effectively kill the initiative process in Nebraska unless a successful court challenge can be made.
But for now, […]

In Nebraska, voters had to pass state legislative term limits three times before they were finally allowed by the courts to become the law of the land. Paul Jacob, president of Citizens in Charge, suggests that since Nebraska lawmakers can’t always derail term limits and other unwelcome citizen-passed laws after the fact, they’re now trying […]

A perverse but not new expression of “state’s rights” is the notion that it is somehow objectionable to

Over at SoundPolitics.com, Stefan Sharansky observes that the attempt of Washington state’s legislature “to cripple the initiative process is part of

The Olympian reports on Paul’s appearance in Olympia, Washington this week to “warn that voter rights of initiative are under attack in many of the 24 states that give voters that power—including Washington.”

Jacob singled out Substitute House Bill 2601 as an attack on

A while back, Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson sued retired State Rep. Tim Pope for $10 million. Why? Because he claimed Pope had violated the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act that regulates commercial activities over phone lines.
But Pope wasn’t selling anything. Pope argues that he made only “public service robocalls,” not in favor of or […]

Paul was the guest today on “The Commentators” radio program on KVI-AM in Seattle, Washington, speaking about the initiative process and current efforts in the state legislature to undermine that process. One of those efforts would actually require initiative petitioners to register with the government.
Paul discussed the issues with the hosts—both of whom were largely […]

Dawn Case, of Woodward, OK, had a good letter-to-the-editor in last Thursday’s Oklahoman, accusing Attorney General Edmondson of turning a blind eye to his friends while diligently pursuing charges against the Oklahoma 3.

Attorney General Drew Edmondson wasn’t satisfied with his first try at getting felony charges against the three grassroots initiative petition circulators and is […]

Supporters of California’s Proposition 93, to be voted on tomorrow, have used some pretty underhanded tactics to try to sway voters to their side. If it isn’t bad enough to try to convince voters that the proposition will strengthen California term limits when in fact it weakens them, proponents also argue in the official voter […]

Glenn Reynolds of InstaPundit fame recently linked to the background article at Free Paul Jacob about the Oklahoma Three:
January 30, 2008
THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, political activists who circulated petitions critical of government policy would be tossed in jail. And they were right!
I learned about this link a few days […]