The smoking hot war for direct democracy
Across red states, people are resisting an assault on their voting rights
Welcome to a Tuesday evening edition of Progress Report.
Between the Jan. 6th committee’s big decision, the many significant policies crammed into omnibus spending bill, and the absolute fraud that sneaked his way into Congress, there’s plenty of national political news to digest and discuss. And we’ll do exactly that in tomorrow’s edition of the newsletter — tonight, we’re talking about a state and local-level trend that has largely gone under the national radar thus far.
High-profile Republican election-deniers experienced may have experienced one brutal loss after another in November’s midterm elections, but in many states, the GOP assault on American democracy has continued apace.
Instead of circus-like “recounts” and conspiracy theories pushed by outsider candidates and paranoids, these attacks on the public will are products of bureaucratic processes and intentional misinterpretation of existing laws.
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It was supposed to be the silver lining for Democrats in Texas, a glimmer of hope amid a catastrophic midterm election. In five municipalities far outside the blue-ing suburbs, historically conservative-leaning residents voted en masse to approve ballot initiatives to decriminalize low-level marijuana possession and limit police enforcement powers at the local level. Contrasted with the failure of the top-down state party, the initiatives’ successes seemingly pointed the way toward a new path for progressive organizers in the state.
Then local lawmakers stepped in and provided a reminder of just why it’s been so hard to transform the politics of Texas, where government often operates under rules reminiscent of the Wild Wild West.
Ground Game Texas, a progressive grassroots organization, worked with local activists to qualify and pass the initiatives in the small cities of Killeen and Denton as well as the towns of San Marcos, Harker Heights, and Elgin. The initiatives were even more successful than anticipated, passing with flying colors in each municipality — the 61% support it received in Harker Heights of firmly red Bell County marked the smallest margin of victory.
Yet despite the near-unanimity, conservative politicians in a majority of the municipalities have already moved to disregard the results.
The first domino fell in Harker Heights, where the city council waited less than two weeks to fully repeal the publicly-approved ordinance. Elsewhere in Bell County, Killeen’s city council certified the ordinance, but only after stripping out the clause that banned police officers from citing marijuana smell as probable cause for search and seizure.
Up north in Denton, the city council hasn’t passed legislation either way, inaction that suggests the fix is in: First, the anti-decriminalization city manager claimed the initiative contained legal problems that a majority of the city council then refused to adjust, rendering the initiative largely toothless.
“The modern GOP has no respect for the vote and no respect for democracy,” Julie Oliver, the co-founder and executive director of Ground Game Texas, tells Progress Report. “If they respected the will of the people, marijuana would be legalized in our state, because a vast majority of Texans want marijuana legalized.”
Without a statewide ballot initiative process, there’s no mechanism for circumventing anti-weed Republicans in Texas, which makes scattershot local ordinances the best opportunity to lower the temperature on the drug war. Police departments seem to recognize that as well, and Oliver suggests that law enforcement was likely involved in the gutting of decriminalization in both Harker Heights and Killeen.
In particular, police departments pad their budgets with the cash and items swiped from people during search and seizures — the poorer you are, the less likely it is that you’ll pay for a lawyer to to help retrieve your valuables. Unfortunately, the right to vote is now up at the top of that list.
A National Scourge
The problem is hardly unique to Texas — Republicans all across the country have spent the past several years turning the screws on direct democracy. This year, their attempts to both toss out successful progressive ballot initiatives and throttle future initiatives have taken on a new urgency.
In Arizona, where shrieking clowns have failed time and again at overturning statewide elections, more focused conservatives have been able to strike blow after blow against direct democracy, often through the legal system.
In March, the Arizona state Supreme Court knifed a successful 2020 initiative that would have instituted a wealth tax to finance a massive increase in public school funding.
This summer, the high court broke all precedent and allowed right-wing zealots to block from the ballot a critical initiative that would have safeguarded voting rights and fair elections in the state.
And earlier this month, a judge put a pause on the implementation of a successful ballot initiative that was supposed to cap the interest on medical debt while a suit filed loan sharks and creditors makes its way through the legal system. An astounding 72% of Arizonans supported that initiative in November.
Conservatives this fall sought even more power to stop the implementation of progressive policies, but voters rejected a question that would have allowed the legislature to alter or repeal measures that it deemed to have illegal language. Unfortunately, Republicans were able to push through a measure that raised the threshold to pass constitutional amendments to a 60% supermajority and another that limits citizen initiatives to a single subject.
Attempts to create a 60% supermajority threshold for direct democracy have proliferated in recent years, with only limited success thus far. Voters firmly rejected amendments to create that imposing requirement in the decidedly non-progressive states of Arkansas and South Dakota this fall; in the latter, the initiative process proved essential to circumventing conservative lawmakers to enact Medicaid expansion this fall.
In Missouri, the Republican legislators that have spent years trying to neutralize the process are now considering several bills to make it harder and perhaps virtually impossible to pass initiatives. One bill would up the threshold for constitutional amendments to 60%, while two others have proposed a two-thirds majority. Another proposal would require a majority of all eligible voters, which would essentially kill the process, and still others want to give more influence to rural voters. Any of these proposals would face voters in 2024 — and of course, require only a simple majority to pass.
Ohio Republicans, wary of abortion rights initiatives that will likely hit the ballot in 2024, set their sights on pushing through the 60% threshold during this lame duck session. They were met with swift pushback from both progressive and conservative activists and quickly abandoned the idea — a strategic retreat that local lawmakers in Texas may soon learn to embrace.
Texas Blowback
For all the crucial benefits that come with decriminalizing marijuana, the ordinances weren’t intended as one-off campaigns. Instead, Ground Game Texas designed these initiatives as a way to build a progressive political infrastructure and engage low-propensity voters in parts of the state that often go ignored by politicians and organizers.
If the immense margins of victory on the initiatives offered some evidence that the larger aims were met, the furious blowback to the city councils’ throttling of the results are proof positive of the political awakening that the campaigns triggered.
In Harker Heights, outraged residents mobilized immediately to challenge the council’s rejection of decriminalization, taking to parks and street canvassing to gather the signatures required to put a repeal of the repeal on the ballot.
“I'm so impressed with the level of activism in these communities,” Oliver says. “The [city council’s] repeal in Harker Heights was one of the biggest things that could have been done to get people to care about local politics. They see it as having their vote stolen.”
Once the signatures are verified by the city manager, the repeal will be put on pause until the May election. That election may also feature the recall of one or more members of the city council, whose flex of power may wind up costing them their positions.
Councilors in Killeen got a whiff of that anger and made a hasty retreat from further aggravation during an intense city council meeting. “There were a couple of amendments that were proposed that were far more aggressive,” Oliver explains. “We had people show up, the chambers were packed, and he council wound up voting them all down.”
Winning the trust of voters and engaging them with politics will have long-term benefits. Already, Ground Game Texas is working to recruit candidates for local elections and provide recommended slates to people that signed their petitions. In doing so, they’re slowly starting to wrest power from the entrenched political institutions, which is exactly why Republicans are so eager to squash initiatives altogether.
“Six weeks ago, this is all about marijuana decriminalization,” Oliver says, “but today it's all about democracy.”
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Direct democracy is awesome!!