{"id":16001,"date":"2016-10-17T20:27:59","date_gmt":"2016-10-18T02:27:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/?p=16001"},"modified":"2016-10-30T19:11:54","modified_gmt":"2016-10-31T01:11:54","slug":"ballot-issue-302-raising-barriers-to-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/?p=16001","title":{"rendered":"Ballot issue 302: Raising Barriers to Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In this time of disaffection with government and the political process, populist ideas and candidates like Donald Trump are getting traction with promises of making broken things great again with illusory solutions.\u00a0 Issue\u00a0302 fits that mold.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_16002\" style=\"width: 213px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-16002\" class=\"size-full wp-image-16002\" src=\"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Stamp_US_1977_3c_Americana.jpg\" alt=\"By The original uploader was Serjmooradian at English Wikipedia - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., Public Domain, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=2929051\" width=\"203\" height=\"237\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-16002\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=2929051<\/p><\/div>\n<p>What exactly is the problem that 302 seeks to fix? \u00a0Issue 302 is like the barriers to voting set up in some states, ostensibly established to solve a nonexistent problem of voter fraud, but really intended to deny voters access to the essence of democracy\u2014the right to vote. \u00a0Issue 302 would take away our right to vote for the candidates of our choosing while pretending to address purported problems with incumbency.<\/p>\n<p>However, we are not suffering from incumbency stasis.\u00a0 Election statistics reaching back almost 50 years, as illustrated in Richard Valenty\u2019s June 24<sup>th<\/sup> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/2016\/06\/24\/boulder-term-limits-theres-no-need-so-whats-the-point\/\">Blue Line article<\/a> indicate plenty of City Council membership turnover, and fairly high election success rates for first time candidates.<\/p>\n<p>What will 302 accomplish? \u00a0Issue 302 is a lifetime and retroactive limit, an extreme and radical level of restriction far beyond Colorado\u2019s own state law.\u00a0 Like the aforementioned voting barriers, 302 will suppress ethnic and racial diversity on council.\u00a0 Only rarely are minorities elected to our council. \u00a0 When we are lucky enough to get a minority council member who is highly valued by voters for the perspective they bring to council and especially valued by our minority communities for the sensitivity they bring to governance, we should be able to keep them on the council as long as they\u2019re willing to stay. \u00a0But under 302, that council member would be term limited forever.\u00a0 That disenfranchises voters who are already politically marginalized.<\/p>\n<p>Another \u201cproblem\u201d cited by proponents is the experience incumbents bring gives them unfair advantages in elections.\u00a0 \u00a0But consider this: maybe Boulder is the desirable place it is today because of the experience and wisdom of previous City Councils.\u00a0 Issue 302 will deny voters the right to choose that experience.<\/p>\n<p>We already have term limits.\u00a0 It\u2019s called VOTING.\u00a0 Just last year voters turned out an incumbent and replaced him with a first time candidate.\u00a0 Open Boulder, the organization behind the ballot initiative, seeks to become the self-appointed gatekeeper to our democracy by limiting your candidate choices.<\/p>\n<p>Be pro choice\u2014vote NO on 302!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this time of disaffection with government and the political process, populist ideas and candidates like Donald Trump are getting traction with promises of making broken things great again with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":16002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[128,4],"tags":[11,35,1148,1149],"class_list":["post-16001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dot-gov","category-opinion","tag-city-council","tag-diversity","tag-election-2016","tag-term-limits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16001"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16005,"href":"https:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16001\/revisions\/16005"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}