So far, we’ve been impressed by a new blog called the Blockbuster Democracy blog. In a round-up last Thursday, blogger Joe Mathews looked skeptically at an article published by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which was very critical of National Voter Outreach, a petitioning company—and the one that Oklahoma 3 defendant Susan Johnson is president of.

Having previously interviewed NVO’s CEO Rick Arnold, and perceiving him as “one of the more thoughtful people in the petition trade, critical of its problems and clear-eyed about its limitations,” Mathews recognized that the Las Vegas Review-Journal story was less than balanced. He also recognized that the article was “built heavily around criticism from the liberal/progressive Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, which is quick to label signature gathering as corrupt (at least in cases where it opposes the cause in question).”

Regarding the Oklahoma situation in particular, Mathews added that:

BISC and other critics invariably propose to criminalize the process of gathering signatures, as in Oklahoma. In supporting these restrictions, liberals are hurting themselves, by establishing precedents restricting political speech that can be used by their political opponents. And such restrictions don’t stop direct democracy. They merely slow it down, adding to the costs (and thus the influence of interest groups) that progressives love to denounce. The more you regulate, the more firms like National Voter Outreach will benefit.

Good stuff!