[Peace-discuss] referendum time: Afghanistan

[Stuart Levy]

On Thu, Mar 04, 2010 at 07:05:57PM -0600, Robert Naiman wrote:
> oops - what did I miss? Please enlighten. I knew that such legislation
> had been pending, but I did not realize that it had passed.

An Afghanistan-war referendum sounds like a great idea,
and definitely still worth a try!

It appears to be still possible for township-meeting electors
(April 13th, 2010!) to authorize advisory referenda.
The City-of-Champaign-Twp Supervisor's page says so explicitly:
    http://www.cctownship.com/cms/
and links to this page ("Township Codes on Annual Town Meetings"):

    http://law.justia.com/illinois/codes/chapter13/11817.html

Relevant piece seems to be:

 (60 ILCS 1/30‑205) 
    Sec. 30‑205. Advisory referenda. By a vote of the majority of electors
present at a town meeting, the electors may authorize that an advisory question
of public policy be placed on the ballot at the next regularly scheduled
election in the township. The township board shall certify the question to the
proper election officials, who shall submit the question in accordance with the
general election law. 
(Source: P.A. 89‑331, eff. 8‑17‑95.)


Note the effective date -- 1995.  This part, which is the only reference
to advisory referenda on the above page, doesn't seem to have been amended.

The only question, which I think was being debated in IL a couple years ago,
was whether the Township Board could decide that only questions related to
Twp governance should be certified.   Maybe they can, although searching for
articles mentioning IL township board and advisory referenda turns up several
for this spring, including at least one that calls on the IL state assembly to
do something -- i.e. clearly beyond township scope.

To forestall that, and make the question more likely to succeed,
maybe the language can also refer to the rate at which City-of-whatever's
Federal taxes are going to support that war.






> On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 6:40 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu> wrote:
> > The Illinois legislature, deeply offended by the notion that people were
> > expressing their opinions on public questions like this, has made it nearly
> > impossible to do so.
> >
> > Maybe we should start with our state senators and representatives: go to
> > their offices and ask why they thought to right to prevent public
> > expressions of opinion. --CGE
> >
> >
> > Robert Naiman wrote:
> >>
> >> Isn't it about time to think about referenda for the fall election?
> >>
> >> Here's an idea: propose a reasonable-sounding yet meaningful
> >> referendum on ending the war in Afghanistan, ask Johnson and Gill to
> >> endorse it, try to get 70% of the vote.
> >>
> >> For example: "Congress should establish a timetable for the withdrawal
> >> of all U.S. military forces from Afghanistan."
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Robert Naiman
> Policy Director
> Just Foreign Policy
> www.justforeignpolicy.org
> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
> 
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