Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Will Oklahoma imprison Paul Jabob et al for circulating political petitions?

They are trying. In any case, unless the law gets struck down as unconstitutional, they will chill petitioning in Oklahoma. That seems to be the purpose, tho I am sure that the politicians will vigorously disagree in public.
National term limits leader and initiative rights advocate Paul Jacob,(Susan Johnson, president of National Voter Outreach, and Rick Carpenter) were indicted in Oklahoma October 2, 2007, on felony charges of violating the state’s statute requiring petition circulators to be residents of Oklahoma.
It all hinges upon an apparently flexible definition of what constitutes residency.

In 2005, they were, as Paul's account says, petitioning for ballot status for an "initiative that would have set a cap on state government spending that could only be lifted by a vote of the people." My impression is that politicians and certain corporate types didn't think that was funny, so the definition was interpreted more tightly than in the past.

I worked a bit with Paul on the Libertarian Party's 1980 Ed Clark for President Campaign. He isn't the kind to shrink from another fight.

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