As masking controversy continues, election to recall Nixa Mayor Brian Steele set for November 2:
The lede is the sixth journalistic W (What I Think Of It) before the other five:
In a democracy like the U.S., a small band of committed voters can leverage major public debate, and sometimes change, through ballot petitions.
Apparently, it only took 73 signatures to get the recall on the ballot to recall the mayor who imposed a mask mandate even after the city council voted against it, which led some citizens (at least 73) to get the recall on the ballot in the special election.
As for a small band getting things through passed through ballot initiatives, c’mon, man, don’t you know that’s what the ballot initiative is? Groups of people, often funded by out-of-region money, collect a bunch of signatures to change, often irrevocably, the state constitution or to pass dedicated tax increases for pet projects without elected officials having to answer for establishing funding priorities, and then the secretary of state or local elections official gets them on the ballot schedule according to whether or not the elected official supports the measure–it gets put onto a low turnout election to help the measure pass, as its proponents will be out in force and will outnumber the normal people who vote in every primary and local election or onto a general election to hopefully block the measure, as normal people will dilute the numbers of true believers.
I’ve talked about this phenomenon a couple of times over the years.
It’s strange that a veteran journalist has only noticed it now when it’s a democratic response to an elected official acting unilaterally in a way the journalist presumably supports (and it starts again).
Well, okay, it’s only as strange as a “news” story that starts with a sentence of pure opinion.
