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Referendum Organizing

Mon, 01/31/2011 - 10:57am | thechampaignlife

I believe referendums should be used much more often to get input from voters on major issues and override lawmakers when they get out of hand.  To lead by example, I have a constitutional amendment to propose for the November 2012 general election for which I have fifteen months to acquire the required 300,000 Illinois registered voters' signatures.  What I lack are the resources and organizing skill to collect these signatures.  Would any of you have any helpful ideas to accomplish this?  Perhaps existing organizations which could be leveraged, notably political and reform-minded ones and gathering places such as churches, malls, hotels, shelters, universities, etc?  Below is the text of my amendment.

Section 1 of Article IV of the Illinois Constitution is amended as follows:

The legislative power is vested in a General Assembly consisting of a Senate <strike>and a House of Representatives</strike>, elected by the electors from 59 Legislative Districts<insert>, and a House of Representatives appointed by random selection from eligible registered voters from</insert><strike and</strike> 118 Representative Districts.<insert>  References to elections for the House of Representatives elsewhere in this Constitution shall be interpreted to mean appointment.</insert>

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cberg wrote on January 31, 2011 at 2:01 pm

Can't really help you too

Can't really help you too much cause it's so vague. I'm not sure your objective here so it's kind of hard to say where to start to gather support.

To start off, you need the why. The hard (and specific) facts as to why the revision needs to be made. To get support, you first need a good backing argument. Then you need to outline the objective for the change, the goal and the benefits it will have. Once you outline your argument, take it to people you know or perhaps a community meeting to get some insight and possible improvements. Then after a good personal/local survey, revisions and the like, would you want to actually work to get the support and signatures to take it to the next level. Once you have that solid proposal, take it to local community meetings and perhaps you can get some resources and help to get it going there. And once you have your reason and objective narrowed down to the specific, I'm sure you can find orginizations and online community/forums that might have goals that share in part of your objective. And continuing with the web, you can create a webpage or blog (emphasis with it being interactive with communication) for it and post compelling flyers at local spots where there might be people that share your objective.

thechampaignlife wrote on February 06, 2011 at 10:02 am

It's actually a simple and

It's actually a simple and specific change: the state House of Representatives will be chosen by sortition instead of elections.

It's the same process used for jury duty and is considered a more true representative democracy, practiced in ancient Greece for hundreds of years in larger government functions where direct democracy wasn't effective. It is considered superior to elections when the officeholder will represent a large population because the candidates for election are personally unknown to the vast majority and must engage in fundraising to promote themselves through mass media, introducing avenues for influence, lies, and corruption by media and funders and resulting in people in office which neither are statistically representative of their populace nor of particularly high ethical or moral standards.

Sortition removes much of these problems by avoiding the election completely. No fundraising, no campaigning, no media bias influensing the outcome of an election, no deals or promises made to secure a re-election, no partisanship. A randomly selected House would be statistically representative and these citizen-lawmakers would have a vested interest in passing laws to improve their communities, becoming appropriately educated on issues at hand as needed. The Senate would continue to be elected and the two would serve as a check and balance against each other, ensuring that those we've chosen to represent us agree with those that statistically represent us.

Thanks for your suggestions. I've made a few contacts to groups that might be interested in the idea but haven't gotten too far off the ground with it yet. I'm a bit overwhelmed at the thought of singlehandedly attempting something like this, I'm more of an idea creator and problem solver than a grassroots organizer, which is why I am really hoping to find the right organization that can take the idea and run with it. I haven't had anyone point out any negatives to sortition yet and certainly few people seem to be happy with the current state of lawmaking in Illinois so I hold hope that it could be given serious consideration. For now I guess I'll keep courting organizations and see where that leads.

cberg wrote on February 06, 2011 at 11:02 am

I'm not much of an organizer

I'm not much of an organizer myself... So what I do is try to pull those in that are. It may sound odd, but try writing to elected government officials. They have the know how and resources. Perhaps your best bet it to write to officials or committees who are in communities where they work on a volunteer basis. The town I grew up in, none of the elected officials were paid. They just may be in board.