Sidebar
Table of Contents
In August the “Original Signers” of the PassMassAmendment petition, submitted their petition to the Attorney General. The AG's position is that because of “Article 48 constraints” on petitioners, we do not have “the right” to put this question (“Corporations Are Not People, Money Is Not Speech”) on the ballot. Article 48 from the Constitutional Convention of 1917 defines restrictions on what “the people” are allowed to petition for. Here is her memo (click on the file below):
Initiative Letter Sept 9 2014.pdf
With all due respect, we do not agree with the Attorney General. We are preparing our opinion on this. See below for details of the process that is taking place, which is expected to get us the petition forms by as early as Friday.
If you want more detail now, please call: 781 593 3042. In the meantime, see more detail below. If that's not enough and if you like reading constitutional legal stuff, know that we did not agree with her last year either. And neither did Jeff Clements, Constitutional Lawyer with Free Speech for People (PMA Challenge to Decertification 2014 FINAL PDF.pdf
The AG, upon receipt of our notice of our complaint, contacted the SJC with the “assent letter”, which basically says that while they do not agree with our right to petition, they will not hinder the process. Here is the “assent letter”:
2014-09-10 Ltr to SJC w Prop Order.pdf
That means that we'll be able to collect the signatures and the SJC will decide later whether we have to right to proceed toward the ballot.
The SJC is expected to order the AG to release the “legal summary” of our petition to the Elections Division of the Secretary of the Commonwealth, so they can print out petitions. When will this happen? We do not know. We were told that it could be as early as YESTERDAY. Now we are waiting. Last year, they did not process it because they didn't have our mailing address. But they did not call us. And so it was two days before we figured out that they were waiting for us to move the process along. This year, they have our addresses. But we are now still waiting. Also, the Elections Division is involved in a primary election recount. So we are waiting to see what the priorities are…
PHEW!
This all means that we could get the petition forms as soon as FRIDAY, Sept12.
It's also worth noting that the AG wrote this in the "decertification" memo:
“This conclusion means that the proposed amendment cannot be the subject of an initiative process, and we cannot certify that the proposed constitutional amendment complies with Part 2 of Article 48. We note, however, that a Massachusetts legislator could pursue such an amendment through the legislative process because that process would be outside Part 2 of Article 48.”
See this!
THE ATTORNEY GENERAL tells us that OUR LEGISLATURE can actually AMEND THE STATE CONSTITUTION with these words THEMSELVES!
ACTION ALERT!
CONTACT your Legislators! tell them to GET THIS AMENDMENT to a VOTE as soon AS POSSIBLE!
Our democracy depends on it!
Here is Jeff Clements' letter from last year supporting our right to being this amendment to the ballot:
J. Clements to P. Sacks 11-22-13.pdf
Here is her memo from last year:
http://www.mass.gov/ago/docs/government/2013-petitions/13-01-letter.pdf
Jeff Clements did not agree with her either. And he wrote this in response:
J. Clements to P. Sacks 11-22-13.pdf
more coming in the next few minutes
