Word: california
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While it costs only $200 to file a proposed initiative, the work of collecting enough signatures is another matter. Putting a measure on the ballot requires money, which places the most powerful interest groups in the driver's seat. Qualifying a measure in California often costs more than $1 million, with initiatives for a constitutional amendment requiring 8% of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election, or 694,354 signatures, and a proposed law requiring 5%, or 433,971. The signatures must be gathered in 150 days...
...more new taxes without your approval," says Birch. "They'll need two-thirds to pass it." Birch admits he is not aware that California is the only state in the union where it is necessary to obtain a two-thirds majority in the legislature to pass a budget and initiate a new tax. (There is another proposed measure, which Birch is not peddling, that would change the legislative vote required to pass a state budget from two-thirds to a simple majority.) Williams, a regular voter, admits to confusion on many of the initiatives. "I never know what...
More than 80 proposed initiatives have been approved for circulation, and experts expect eight to 10 to qualify for the November ballot. "Right now, anyone with $200 and enough signatures can put something on the ballot [in California]," says Mark Paul, a senior scholar with the New America Foundation's California Program. "People assume these things are vetted, but they are not." Twenty-four states allow citizens to make laws and constitutional amendments directly by way of the initiative process. Fred Kimball, the owner of Kimball Petition Management, believes initiatives are an answer to a legislative process he says...
...response to the layers of initiatives that have made California government increasingly dysfunctional, the Bay Area Council business group announced a plan last year to put an initiative on the ballot to hold a new constitutional convention. But two weeks ago, its Reform California campaign ran out of money. One reason: Kimball's firm and others, fearing such a convention might change the initiative business, warned their contractors against carrying the petitions. Very few of the signature gatherers at the shopping malls across California are volunteers; nearly all are contractors like Birch, working for firms hired by the state...
...with speedskaters, limiting their ability to build speed and work on expansive elements such as spirals and intricate footwork sequences. Things aren't much better in Japan, where crowded sessions forced Asada, as an up-and-coming talent in the early 2000s, to train for a few years in California before returning to a new rink built in Nagoya. (See a brief history of Olympic sore losers...