It is not that hard to detect the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center’s Janus face when it comes to the right of citizen initiative. They’ve got a glaring track record.

“Good” BISC is all in favor of the initiative process when leftish political causes are at stake. But when a conservative or libertarian cause is the subject of a petition, a mysterious potion is consumed, the makeshift pro-democratic garb is doffed, and it’s time for bad BISC to lurch into action—flinging phony charges of fraud, urging jail time for political opponents, and doing its darnedest to indict and obstruct the initiative process.

A recent report from the Capital Research Center, “The Ballot Initiative Strategy Center: How It Promotes Big Labor’s Political Strategy” by James Dellinger and Karl Crow (pdf document) observes that BISC’s role has been evolving (or devolving):

BISC is moving into a new area in 2008: It is using its expertise to thwart efforts by the groups it opposes from making use of the ballot initiative process altogether. BISC has become the “go-to” group that Big Labor relies on whenever it wants to organize a “blocker campaign,” a tactic unions use to restrict access to the ballot initiative process. The victims of these tactics argue that BISC’s abuse of the initiative process is a form of political thuggery that has no place in a democracy.

The report offers a brief overview of the history of initiative and referendum in the U.S. and details how BISC since its founding in 1999 has sought to implement a “counterstrategy” of more vigorously using initiatives to further items on the liberal agenda like minimum-wage (”living wage”) hikes, while also seeking to defeat initiatives favored by the right like controlling taxes and government spending. Even foes of BISC’s political agenda can readily agree that its peaceful use of the initiative process is a legitimate excercise of democracy.

But:

BISC does more than promote liberal and labor-backed ballot initiatives. It also tracks the funding of ballot initiatives and tries to prevent conservatives from getting their initiatives on state ballots. Union-backed BISC does not see money generally as a threat to popular democracy, only money funding conservative or libertarian initiatives.

In a 2007 report, BISC highlighted its campaign to root out conservative funding of ballot initiatives, targeting Arno Consulting for its paid efforts to get initiatives on the ballot in Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. The report catalogs how BISC-allied activists tried to keep the initiatives off the ballot by challenging the legality of signatures submitted on initiative petitions….

Frustrated by the advantages conservatives and libertarians enjoy in state-level organization and funding, BISC and other progressive groups are turning to the courts and the initiative process itself to neutralize that advantage. BISC has found that residency requirements and prohibitions on paid signature collection are very effective ways to frustrate conservative signature-gathering.

The Capital Research Center also duly records BISC’s hostility toward the Oklahoma Three, representing a sharp escalation of tactics that had already grown deplorable:

In a 2007 letter to Oklahoma Democratic Attorney General Drew Edmondson, BISC offered to assist in the indictments of veteran term limits activist Paul Jacob, president of Citizens in Charge, National Voter Outreach official Susan Johnson, and Rick Carpenter, a leader of the group Oklahomans in Action. BISC accused them of violating Oklahoma’s law against employing petition circulators who are not state residents and it urged Edmondson to prosecute anyone who made a financial contribution to their cause….

BISC’s own position on petition-gathering appears contradictory. In 2005, BISC’s Wilfore defended a signature collection company whose petitioning practices were so sloppy that the Washington, D.C., Board of Elections & Ethics fined the initiative committee more than $750,000. The petition company, Progressive Campaigns, Inc., is listed on the BISC website as a preferred vendor. Then there are the petition fraud allegations that have been leveled at the radical group ACORN and Fieldworks, another BISC-preferred vendor. Neither Wilfore nor other BISC representatives have seen fit to offer comments on them.

According to Paul Jacob, president of the pro-referendum Citizens in Charge Foundation, BISC “pretends to be for the (ballot initiative) process, as they also undertake measures to fight general ballot access.” Rather than engage in “leafleting,” a common, legal and healthy way to fight initiatives you don’t agree with, Jacob says BISC trains its operatives to frustrate initiatives campaigns using thuggish measures that amount to what he terms “blocking campaigns.”

Read the whole thing.