Free Liberal columnist Paul Jacob has been indicted by the state of Oklahoma for illegally petitioning to place a taxpayers bill of rights on the ballot. He has been threatened with 20 years in prison for this offense. I fully support Paul in his fight against this injustice. Paul has spent his life fighting for our freedom and right to check the power of the state. Now he needs our help. You can show your support by joining this facebook group: Free Paul Jacob -- 100,000 Strong for Constitutional Rights.
See also: FreePaulJacob.com.
Paul's statement follows here:
What Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson is trying to do to me is wrong.
In America, we cherish the right to engage in politics, to speak our minds, to promote our candidate, to work to pass a voter initiative, without fear of reprisal.
That is why today is such a sad day, not only for me, but for all of us who love the initiative process and the right of citizens to control their government.
This indictment unsealed today is not about the law, but rather 100 percent politically motivated. This is politics – very ugly politics.
The highest legal office in the state of Oklahoma seems bent on silencing citizens through harassment and intimidation, threats and coercion. The goal is to silence me, and to frighten you, from petitioning our government.
Those who attempt to put citizens in charge of government spending decisions, through initiatives like the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, or any other issue that rankles the powerful political forces of a state, can expect to face an onslaught by the full powers of the government.This is yet another round in the age-old attempt to stop ideas by force, by harassment, by imprisonment, by anything except a better idea. Oklahomans, your attorney general is not practicing democracy. He is practicing the politics of destruction.
It won’t work.
This indictment will not stand. I will fight it with every fiber of my being. And I know that, in the end, those who misuse the power of their office for political advantage, employing ugly and un-democratic tactics, will ultimately face an indictment of their own.
My life, my family, my children are being threatened here…for what? For what?
I have committed no crime. Unless the heartfelt desire to place government under the control of its citizens is now illegal. But this cannot be so. There is much bluster in this indictment. Yet what is my actual offense but that of daring to help Oklahoma voters hold an election to decide an issue?
No, I don’t deserve to go to prison for being politically active. I know that. You know that. Mr. Edmondson should know that, too.
The State of Oklahoma threatens me and others with prison to prevent our involvement in political life and to chill the speech and assembly of others who might wish to become involved. Involved in working to hold an election. To give Oklahomans a vote on an issue.
One might expect this kind of repression in Egypt or Iran or China. But not Oklahoma.
We the People will not be intimidated. We will keep fighting to turn out-of-control government into government that is under citizen control. We will defeat this vicious attempt to criminalize honest political activity. And in the end, we will win.
Background
Let me address the so-called charge against me. I’m accused of violating the Oklahoma statute requiring petition circulators to be residents, a residency requirement currently being challenged in federal court. There seems little justification for this underlying law other than to restrict and hamper the petition process. I believe it will ultimately be struck down as unconstitutional.
Twice in the last quarter century—in Meyer v. Grant and in ACLF v. Buckley—the U.S. Supreme Court struck down similar restrictions, like regulating petitioners’ pay and requiring petitioners to be registered voters. As the High Court put it in Meyer, government cannot “reduce the available pool” of people to assist citizens in communicating with their fellow citizens and petitioning their government.
But regardless of how the courts ultimately rule on the constitutionality of the residency requirement, everyone I worked with on the TABOR petition sought to follow the statute as written. As an advisor to the petition drive, I worked to help Rick Carpenter and Oklahomans in Action obtain the best petition services at the best price, and then to monitor the drive’s progress.
Oklahomans in Action contracted with a petition company called National Voter Outreach, which had worked in Oklahoma on many successful petition drives before taking on the TABOR petition. That contract stipulated that the company was thoroughly familiar with the laws of Oklahoma regarding petitioning.
As the TABOR petition drive got underway, an aggressive campaign was launched to block and harass petition gatherers. Jeannie Berg, an expert in campaigns of harassment against petition drives, was brought in from Oregon to manage the multitude of blockers—many of them brought in from outside the state, and reportedly paid $100 a day.
These “blockers” used thuggish tactics, which have been documented. For example, gangs of them would stalk a petitioner, interrupting, yelling and creating a scene whenever a voter was being asked to sign the petition. There was an organized campaign of lying to store managers, alleging rude treatment from petitioners and asking that they be removed.
In response to all the harassment, many Oklahoma petitioners left the state to petition in other states. Given the difficult environment, not enough new circulators were being recruited and retained in Oklahoma to enable the petition to reach the ballot. Under such circumstances—and under the legislature’s (not the constitution’s) draconian 90-day petition window—I suggested to the petition company that the drive be scuttled.
I was then informed that under Oklahoma’s statutory residency requirement, people could move to Oklahoma and immediately declare residency, and thus be qualified to circulate the petition. The petition company felt enough people could be recruited to move to Oklahoma to gather enough signatures to bring the question to the ballot.
When I inquired as to whether the state officials had been asked for their guidelines on what constitutes residency, I was told that the petition company had indeed sought—and received—the advice and approval of officials in the Secretary of State’s office. Indeed, two separate individuals with National Voter Outreach spoke to government officials to determine the rules on residency. They were told that people could indeed come to Oklahoma, declare residency, and begin circulating a petition.
In good faith, the company acted on this information.
I also asked the folks at National Voter Outreach whether there had been any challenges of petition drives on the basis of residency, and whether any ruling on same had been issued by the Oklahoma Supreme Court. I received a copy of the court’s decision in a challenge to an initiative to ban cock-fighting. In that decision, circulators were challenged for being “out-of-state” circulators because they had moved to Oklahoma during the petition drive and because many lived in hotels during their residence in the state. According to the information I received, every circulator in the cock-fighting ban petition who declared him or herself a resident was ruled to be qualified to circulate the petition, regardless of how long he resided in the state or whether he lived in a hotel. The only circulator disqualified had listed an out-of-state address on the petition form.
In 1994 and 1996 I monitored ballot drives in Oklahoma for term limits. During those drives, circulators were required to be registered voters. Many people moved to Oklahoma, registered to vote, and circulated the petition. Often they would live with friends or at a hotel.
As long as it could be verified that a person was a registered voter in Oklahoma, a proponent could feel comfortable that that circulator met the statutory requirements and that his petition would count. However, that voter registration requirement was subsequently struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in Buckley v. ACLF.
After the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s decision in the TABOR challenge, there’s a new interpretation of the residency statute. The new standard argues that no one who moves to the state to accept a job, no matter how long the duration, is a “genuine” resident unless he is committed to remaining in the state permanently. For example, in the challenge to the TABOR petition, the court ruled that a man who had come to Oklahoma in September of 2005 to circulate the petition and then continued to live in the state for the next ten months was NOT a resident. Thus, the Oklahoma voters who signed his petitions were disenfranchised.
Under the new requirement of residency there is simply no way for petition companies to adequately determine whether a petitioner is or is not a resident. Therefore, future petition proponents and managers can expect to face criminal prosecution depending on circumstances largely, if not entirely, beyond their control. This is certain to have a chilling effect on petition activity.
The underlying state statute here is an unconstitutional attempt to deny the First Amendment rights of Oklahoma citizens. I believe it will be and should be struck down. But even so, during the TABOR ballot drive we sought to understand this statute and to abide by it.
Let me say it again: constitutional or not, we obeyed the statute.
So, why the prosecution? I am told by many friends in Oklahoma that this outrageous prosecution is, sadly, very much in character for the Oklahoma Attorney General. They inform me that while Drew Edmondson shows an uncanny ability to miss the corruption taking place right under his nose by members of his own Democratic Party—such that a federal investigation must now be conducted—he tosses decency and common sense straight out the window to persecute his political opponents.
What’s at stake? The very process by which citizens can check their government—the right to voter initiative and referendum—is under attack in these prosecutions. When the powerful in government are threaten by citizens demanding reform, they have time and again sought to clamp down on the petition process.
After term limits swept the initiatives states, something I was very much involved in, legislatures throughout these states launched a barrage of legislation to hamstring and restrict he process and hamstring citizen efforts for reform.Now we see a similar backlash from politicians afraid of the Taxpayers Bill of Rights, which would give voters more control over state spending decisions.
Three-hundred thousand Oklahomans signed a petition to vote on giving citizens a veto on large spending increases. The state constitution says voters have the right to decide. But the Oklahoma Supreme Court said no.
Just months ago, the Oklahoma Supreme Court again found a flimsy excuse to block voters from considering another initiative—the so-called 65-Percent Solution. The court deemed the short statement that the legislature (not the constitution) requires proponents to place on petitions—i.e., to give petition signers simply the “gist” of the measure—to be insufficient. The voters supposedly didn’t know what they were signing.
Again, the highest legal authority in the State of Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Supreme Court, tossed the petitions of hundreds of thousands of citizens into the trash.