Those of you who think citizen initiatives work well to make laws the legislature refuses to consider, should know this.
Five questions were on the 2016 ballot and four were approved by the voters. Question 5, Ranked Choice Voting was approved by an historic 52% of the vote. But despite that mandate for ranked choice, the state Republican Senate majority with the help of an acquiescent Democrat controlled House, has decided to overturn this important citizen initiated law.
Leadership of the Republican Party is on record strongly opposing enactment of ranked choice. Senate Republican leaders Michael Thibodeau and Garrett, Mason, both oppose enactment entirely and will continue to work to completely overturn the law. Democrat Representative Louie Luchini, is in favor of delaying implementation, which will also kill the law.
The Senate Republican majority continues working to frustrate rather than enact other citizen initiated legislation passed in 2016. That effort includes not only ranked choice, but also, better funding for schools, raising the minimum wage and legalizing recreational marijuana.
Ignoring citizen initiated laws seems to clearly show this Republican legislatures dislike of and their plans to neuter, limit or overturn the state Constitutional provision for citizen initiative law making.
If this usurpation of your constitutional rights is perfectly alright with you, do nothing. But if you feel you wasted your vote on Citizen Initiatives in 2016 and would like your representative to know about it, give them a call or better yet, vote them out of office next time. If you don’t do that you may find even more of your state constitutional rights are ignored by this Republican controlled Legislature.