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City practices electioneering
The citizen initiative process was born out of political despair. The public could no longer tolerate the stonewalling that they received from their elected representatives. Currently, the city ruling elites would like to exercise another layer of stonewalling. They are throwing out all the stops, in the courts, to prevent two citizen initiatives from being permitted to even appear on the November ballot.
But just in case the initiatives do get past the courts and do appear on the November ballot, the mayor and City Council have added four measures to the same ballot, measures that are obviously engineered to prejudice the voters against the citizen initiatives. It is hard to believe that this stratagem is legal, but apparently the mayor and council have resorted to this tactic before, without legal repercussions.
There used to be laws against electioneering. These folks aren’t practicing their craft in front of the polling sites. They are putting their political message right on the ballot itself, in-your-face, so to speak, right next to the measure(s) they find personally objectionable.
As long as this arbitrary, selective practice is permitted to go on in this community, the voting public will be the poorer for it.
Earl Elias
Spokane