Coming to California, Designing a Brand New Initiative Process

Why would Europeans be coming to California, seeking advice?

Well, a group of European activists and scholars are coming this week to learn as much as they can about our initiative process. Their goal? Learn what to do (and perhaps not to do) as they design a new initiative process of their own.

The process in question is called the European Citizen’s Initiative. It’s an agenda-setting initiative – permitting the people to introduce legislation (though not put a measure on the ballot – at least not yet).

This new initiative process is going to happen – it was authorized as part of a new European Union constitution enacted via the Lisbon Treaty. Backers of some controversial policies – a ban on genetically modified organizers, a tax on financial transactions – are already planning initiatives. But how the initiative process will work is up in the air. How will signatures be gathered and verified? Will some subjects be off limit to the initiative process? How many of the 27 European Union countries will have to contribute signatures for a measure to be considered qualified?

The visitors will be meeting with legislators, consultants, scholars, election administrators and others in Sacramento and San Francisco to talk about how we conduct the initiative process here. After a week, they’ll return to Europe to spend the rest of the summer and fall fighting over the rules and regulations for the process.

You’ll be able to hear from many of these visiting dignitaries beginning next Saturday at a free, public forum in San Francisco I’m organizing. It’s called the 2010 Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy and you can learn more here. Among the speakers are two of the people quoted in this recent New York Times piece on the European Citizen’s Initiative.