Today is Power IT Down Day
As of Tuesday, nearly 130 questions had qualified for statewide ballots nationwide, with abortion, anti-affirmative action, immigration and same-sex marriage as the hot button issues in several states, according to the Washington-based National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). More than 50 of the ballot measures are citizen initiatives, and the rest are legislative referrals.
There are around 200 ballot measures in an average year, according to NCSL. So far, Colorado, Oregon and California have the most questions on their ballots, with 15 questions on the Colorado ballot, the most the state has seen since the 1992 election. One of those questions, Referendum O, would tighten up the ballot initiative process, increasing the number of signatures on petitions for constitutional amendments and requiring that the signatories come from all of the state’s seven Congressional districts. It also would lower the signature requirements for statutory initiatives in an effort to encourage proponents to present their proposals as statutes rather than amendments.
The NCSL’s Ballot Measure Update is available at www.ncsl.org.
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