- Citizens’ Initiative is also known as Direct Initiative
- Concerned citizens currently have no mechanism to bypass the state legislature in proposing solutions to problems we experience in New Jersey.
- Everything must be done by legislators, on their schedule, at their discretion.
- Citizens’ Initiative enables citizens to bypass the Legislature via petitioning to place a binding question on statewide ballots.
- If approved by voters, the Legislature would have to act on the measure.
- Twenty Seven states have Citizens’ Initiative and/or Citizen Veto.
Let’s say you’ve had a particularly bad and very personal experience with the State of New Jersey. The experience has left you thinking that this can’t happen to another person and you’ve got a great solution to fix the problem.
Being the person that you are, you approach the representatives from your state legislative district to explain your experience and your solution but they don’t see the need to solve this problem the way that you do. They might not even agree that there’s a problem. As it is today in New Jersey, you can either continue to approach state legislators and other elected officials to try to motivate them to take on this problem, you can run for office and then continue to try to get others to understand the problem you’ve identified, or you can forget about it. Those are your choices.
With Citizens’ Initiative, there’s another option. You can organize a petition and ask people across the state to join you in supporting this solution you’ve devised for the problem that you believe will continue to harm NJ residents.
Once your petition has enough signatures, the question will be placed on the next general election ballot and voters statewide will decide whether or not they agree that your solution should become a state law.
If voters approve of your proposal, the legislature is obligated to act by creating a new law from it. That is Citizens’ Initiative and there are twenty seven states that have this practice by which citizens can bypass an inactive legislature to force issues into new laws.