Tighten The Requirements To Get Something Put On The Friggin' Ballot! And Other Comments On 60s-70s Liberalism

Speaking of lying and the serious consequences it has in life:

Some Maine voters are saying they were duped into signing a petition that could lead to a statewide vote in March aimed at repealing a new law that eliminates religious and philosophical exemptions for childhood vaccines.

In emails to the Portland Press Herald and in posts on social media sites, voters are saying they were misled or even lied to by those circulating the petition for a statewide vote on the matter.

Other voters are writing Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, asking him to remove their signatures from the petition. Dunlap’s office provided copies of the emails to the Press Herald, with the senders’ addresses and contact information redacted.

“I was misled by the signature gatherer about what I was signing,” Scarborough voter Jamie Brennan wrote. “I am a strong supporter of the law to mandate vaccinations for kids with only medical exceptions. I was told that the referendum would further strengthen our vaccination laws, not veto the law. Granted I should have read what I was signing, but being in a hurry I took the signature gatherer’s word for it.”

Like others, Brennan was asking that his signature be removed from the petition.

But Dunlap said Friday he can’t do that under state law. Dunlap also said that voters commonly complain they were misled by petitioners after a ballot measure or people’s veto question makes the ballot. He said that’s why state law requires petitioners to have a copy of the law they want to enact or repeal available for a voter’s review as they gather signatures.

“We can’t regulate what people say about their petitions,” Dunlap said. “There is no mechanism to it and, frankly, it comes under the First Amendment anyway.”
Opponents of the vaccination law declined to comment on Friday.

The, as I recall 1970s era (error, really),  "reform" that allowed ridiculously easy access to get referendum questions on the ballot  is something that has had the exact opposite effect than the good c. 1970s era liberals intended it to have.  Why the same idiots (and I was one of them) didn't figure into how the 1964, Warren Court permission for the media (its most politically effective forms owned by big money) to lie with impunity didn't figure into things is a question worth asking.

What that idealism had done was has open up the referendum process to manipulation to those with the most money to fund signature gathering, to those who will pay people to collect signatures.  As Matt Dunlap points out, there really is no way to make sure that people are not being lied to to get them to sign something they really wouldn't agree to sign if they knew what it meant.  

There is also no way to ensure that people will read the text of the law change to be put on the ballot or that, even the rare person who might read it, will understand that's what it means. 

And if you can say that about the self-selected universe of petition signers, it's even more true of the electorate who will know only so much as they hear on the paid TV and other messaging on the ballot issue.  That is a hard truth of American politics that you ignore to your peril.


The 1960s-70s era liberalism that led to such "reforms" was often pretty stupid in assuming that most people were like dutiful readers of Consumer Reports, fact checking and researching to their hearts content and their scrupulous edification.  Most of us were rather flaky college grads who had the stupid conceit that most people were like us when any realistic view of what was going on would tell us that they were as they were.   

Why the country twice voting for the massive liar, Nixon, didn't clue us in is worth a bit of thought.  

Making it easy to get complex issues onto referendum ballots was one of the stupider things that were done by liberal "reformers" in the past fifty years.  The theoretical benefits to good government that were supposed to come out of that theoretical exercise in direct democracy have been better for bad government in most cases.  

The high point of liberalism in this country, in most hard reality, was during the Lyndon Johnson administration and Johnson was a pretty ruthless politician whose attainment of the presidency was a result of deals made in smoky rooms, though the manipulations of the, as it turned out in reality, less liberal Kennedy faction. 

Liberalism did a lot better under that hard, even cynical Johnsonian regime than it has under flaky idealism as incubated in the artificial environs of universities and non-profits.  The lives of Americans, especially those who liberalism is supposed to serve, were better off for Johnson's programs so ruthlessly pushed through  than it was made by the idealist's "reforms".   That is a fact of American history, one that any real idealist among liberals will consider long and hard before they go for the easier and more pleasantly sounding - and generally hollow - proclamations that such liberals will make and fall for. 
 
Update:  I would have to go to a larger library than I have access to to research when the absurd easing of the petitioning process first came in, the laws have been revised so dating when the previous versions of the laws were adopted online isn't easy.   As I recall it was during the 1970s, probably during the term of the last actual liberal governor we had, Kenneth Curtis, before the reaction to him in the form of the awful James Longley was elected as an independent (probably due to relaxed ballot requirements) in 1978.   Longley was sort of the Paul LePage before LePage became the 38% governor of my state due to the splitting of the liberal vote, itself a result of the absurdly easy ballot access, a "liberal" reform of the type I wrote about here.   Beware the real world results of such idealistic sounding "liberal" simplicities.  

I should point out that James Longley being governor of Maine led to his vile son, James Longley jr. being elected as a congressman from my state.   Another result of "third party" splitting the left in my state.