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Oklahomas ballot initiative process is making headlines.

After Kansas voters decided to protect the states constitutional right to abortion care earlier this month, reporter Carmen Forman of The Oklahoman published an article about the possibility of a similar question appearing on the ballot in Oklahoma.

Last week my colleague Paul Monies wrote about the state hiring an outside contractor to count and verify ballot initiative signatures.

From criminal justice reform to Medicaid expansion, Oklahoma voters have approved significant policy changes through citizen-led initiatives. But the path to ballot can be anything but easy.

Heres a brief primer on how citizen initiatives make the ballot in Oklahoma.

Who can start an initiative petition?

Citizen-led initiatives require at least three primary sponsors. To start the process, the group must notify the Secretary of States office of their intent to file a draft petition.

Required documents include a fiscal review and an explanation of the measure. Once this paperwork is submitted, the Secretary of State reviews the initiatives language and forwards it to the Attorney Generals office for further review. The attorney general may interpret language as difficult to understand, misleading or biased and propose revisions.

After the petition number has been publicized, theres a 10-business-day window where citizens may challenge the constitutionality of the initiative.

When can organizers begin collecting signatures? How many signatures are required?

Within 30 days of the resolution of all legal challenges, the Secretary of States office must set a date allowing the collection of signatures to begin. Organizers then have 90 days to collect the necessary number of signatures.

The required total varies based on the type of ballot initiative. Heres a breakdown:

Once signatures are verified, how long does it take an initiative to reach the ballot?

It varies. While theres no deadline for signatures to be counted, they have historically been counted and verified 3 to 4 weeks after submission. Legal challenges may arise even after the votes have been counted.

Amber England, who ran the successful Medicaid expansion initiative in 2020, told Oklahoma Watch earlier this month that the initiative process has many opportunities for opponents to stall or challenge the effort.

Once the votes have been counted and all litigation has been resolved, the Secretary of States office notifies the governor, who issues an election proclamation. The state election board must receive this notice at least 70 days before the next election in order for the initiative to appear on the ballot.

How does Oklahomas process compare to other states?

Oklahoma is one of 28 states that allow citizens to initiate legislation. Of these states, Oklahomas requirements to get a question on the ballot are among the most stringent, according to the non-partisan Initiative and Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California.

For example, Arkansas requires signatures equal to 10% of votes cast in the governors race to get on the ballot. In North Dakota, petition organizers must collect signatures equal to 4% of the states population.

Have democracy-related questions or thoughts? Send me a DM on Twitter or email me at Kross@Oklahomawatch.org.

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Democracy Watch: How Cumbersome is Oklahoma's Ballot Initiative Process? - Oklahoma Watch

President Biden is set to sign a sweeping $739 billion bill to address the climate crisis, reduce drug costs and establish a 15% minimum tax for large corporations. On Friday, the House passed the Inflation Reduction Act on a party-line vote of 220 to 207. No Republicans supported the legislation. The White House released a video of Biden praising the bill.

President Joe Biden: The American people are going to see lower prescription drug prices, lower healthcare costs and lower energy costs. And big corporations are finally going to start to pay their fair share. Those that are paying $0 in federal income tax will now have to pay a minimum tax. And America is going to take the most aggressive action weve ever taken in confronting the climate crisis and strengthening the energy security of America, and the world, quite frankly.

Despite Bidens high praise, many climate groups criticize the package for including major handouts to the fossil fuel industry, which were added to win the support of conservative Democratic West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, who is the largest recipient of fossil fuel industry donations in Congress. The Center for Biological Diversity described the bill as a climate suicide pact.

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House Passes Sweeping $739 Billion Climate, Healthcare and Tax Bill - Democracy Now!

Commentary

Luiz Incio Lula da Silva, the far-left candidate in Brazils presidential elections this year, has resumed his attack on freedom of expression by demanding the social control of the media.

Social control of the media can be defined as a euphemism to subordinate the free flow of information to the undercover interference from government.

Commonly known as Lula, the former president vowed that if elected in the next presidential elections, his government would definitely implement this state-sponsored censorship of social media.

We will have to regulate social networks, regulate the internet, set a parameter, said Lula in a Nov. 19, 2021, interview in Brussels, Belgium.

In this interview, Lula falsely accused the current incumbent of being a president who tells lies a day through social networks.

According to him, the proliferation of alleged fake news is motivated by the rise and election of far-right politicians like President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and former U.S. president Donald Trump.

However, this statement reveals more about Lula himself than his political adversaries. He is a former union leader who served as the 35th president of Brazil from 2003 to 2010.Over that period, he attempted to consolidate dictatorial powers by means of a number of external bodies of social control over the press, television and movies.

Fortunately, however, the constant scandals that shook his notoriously corrupt administration had at least the beneficial effect of demoralising a government bent on establishing a long-lasting dictatorial regime.

On July 23, 2003, during the Lula administration, Brazil supported the request from Fidel Castros Cuba to suspend the consultative status of the Reporters Without Borders (RWB) within the U.N. Human Rights Commissions.

Lula supported the suspension of RWB because this organisation dared to criticise the election of Muhammar Gaddafis Libya as the chair of the U.N. Human Rights Commission (pdf). In joining with Libya and other countries with an appalling human-rights record (China, Cuba, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia), Lulas Brazil voted for the suspension of one of the few NGOs representing freedom of the press to have consultative status within this branch of the U.N. Economic and Social Council.

On May 11, 2004, the Lula administration arbitrarily revoked the visa of New York Times correspondent Larry Rohter, who was outside Brazil at the time, after he wrote an article about Lulas notorious drinking habits.

The action was entirely illegal because the law in Brazil explicitly prohibits the expulsion of foreigners married to a Brazilian or having a Brazilian child. Rohter not only lived in Brazil, but he was married to a Brazilian woman and had two Brazilian children.

The incident caused an uproar, and even journalists who questioned Rohters article criticized the government for its intolerance, said a report of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

And yet, only a few days after the illegal decision to expel that journalist, Lula said: Its not for a president to reply to an idiocy such as this. It doesnt deserve any reply. It deserves action. I think he should be much more worried than I am.

He further stated: This journalist will no longer stay in this country. This will serve as an example to others. If I didnt take this measure, any other journalist from any other country could do the same without any fear of punishment.

In August 2004, the Lula administration introduced a bill that aimed to abolish freedom of the press via the creation of the Federal Council of Journalism (CFJ). This agency would have acquired extraordinary powers to guide, discipline, and monitor all journalists working in Brazil. They would have to register with that entity to have the right to work as a journalist. The then president would have the power to freely nominate the board members of this federal regulatory agency to a four-year term.

On that occasion, Alberto Dines, professor of journalism at the University of Campinas, explained that the CFJ bill would undermine the indispensable separation between government and press.

According to the Brazilian Press Association, that bill was a threat to the constitutionally established principle of freedom of expression.

Fortunately, the Cmara dos Deputados (House of Representatives) decided to vote down that proposal in 2005.

However, in 2009, there was a second attempt by the Lula administration to establish government control over the media through a National Conference on Communications charged with drafting a regulatory framework that would impose social control of the press and its content.

Many media organisations refused to participate and several of the countrys leading newspapers heavily criticised the initiative.

According to the then president of the National Magazine Editors, Roberto Muylaert, his organisation would not participate in this process because the idea of social control of the media is incompatible with freedom of expression and a free press.

The proposal to create a social council to audit press content implies modifications to the Constitution which guarantees free initiative and freedom of expression, he said.

Indeed, the Brazilian Constitution is patently clear in Article 5 that all forms of censorship or hindrance being placed on the freedom of the press are prohibited.

The Brazilian Constitution goes even further and provides in Article 220 a formal protection for freedom of expression for intellectual, artistic, scientific, and media activities. The provision states that every manifestation of thought, expression, and information shall never be subjected to any form of governmental restriction for political, ideological, or artistic reasons.

I hope that the winner of the next presidential elections in Brazil will be respectful of basic human rights and the Brazilian Constitution. Accordingly, the candidature of Lula da Silva represents a serious threat to the future of democracy and the rule of law in Brazil. In fact, if Lula were elected for another presidential term, it could spell absolute disaster for the Brazilian democracy.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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Augusto Zimmermann is professor and head of law at Sheridan Institute of Higher Education in Perth. He is also president of the Western Australian (WA) Legal Theory Association, editor-in-chief of The Western Australian Jurist, and served as a member of WA's law reform commission from 2012 to 2017. Zimmermann has authored numerous books, including "Direito Constitucional Brasileiro," "Western Legal Theory," and "Christian Foundations of the Common Law."

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Another Lula da Silva Presidency Would Be a Disaster for Brazilian Democracy and the Press - The Epoch Times

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LETTER: Vote to defend democracy | Letters to the Editor - Ashland Daily Press

The Great School Wars that the educational historian and educational policy analyst Diane Ravitch wrote about in 1974 have returned with a vengeance.

Older battlesover tracking, community control, public funding for religious schools, multicultural education and even busingonce thought laid to rest, have resurfaced, while a host of new flashpoints, over critical race theory, school choice, charter schools, publicly funded tuition vouchers, equity, standardized testing, teacher accountability, transgender students rights and sex education, have exploded.

Even a glance at the news headlines reveals the depth and intensity of the deep cultural divides surrounding K-12 education. Here are a few examples:

San Francisco has become a touchstone in this educational Kulturkampf, whether the issue involves the names of public schools, the display of an allegedly racially insensitive mural by a 1930s Communist, the use of the word chief as part of administrative titles, or the districts math curriculum, which professors from Berkeley, Harvard, Stanford and UCLA claim will leave students, especially those from lower-income backgrounds, less prepared for postsecondary STEM education.

I recently spoke with a reporter who had been asked by her editor to write about the relationship between education and democracy. This is, of course, a fraught, extraordinarily complicated topic.

Theres the Dewey-esque notion of education as the bedrock of democracy: as the instrument for producing informed, reflective, independently minded citizens, rather than passive, compliant drones.

John Deweys civic-minded vision has, of course, inspired generations of educators, who aspire to transform their classrooms into models of democracy in action, cultivating students who can think critically, question established beliefs, undertake independent, in-depth research and engage in various forms of active learning.

Then theres how education actually functions in todays democracy:

As I spoke with the reporter, I thought quite a bit about what it means for the educational system itself to be democratic.

I think its fair to say that the history of primary and secondary education in the United States is, in fact, a series of ongoing controversies over education and democracy. Although the areas of contention have shifted over time, whats at stake is nothing less than these questions:

Those of us who teach at colleges should not assume that we are largely invulnerable to the kinds of cultural conflicts raging across the K-12 landscape. Nor should those who teach in California or New York be sanguine that the kinds of controversies raging in Texas and Florida over tenure or guns on campus have nothing to do with their states.

Faculty even in the bluest of blue states need to recognize that institutional autonomy is ebbing and that their legislatures are becoming much more intrusive in matters of admissions, curricular requirements, credit transfer, remedial education and institutional spending priorities.

Also, one-shot infusions of funds into public colleges and universities should not blind faculty to a host of worrisome long-term trends, for example in demographics and student preparation and interests, that will inevitably disrupt higher education.

Democracy is not simply a matter of free elections and voting rights. Its about empowerment. Its about conflicting interest groups and lobbies, each asserting their own values and priorities.

Today, more and more campus stakeholders believe that they should have a greater voice in institutional functioning. The most striking examples can be found in growth of graduate student unions and the emergence of the first undergraduate unions, It has come as a shock to many faculty members to discover that in campus decision making, theirs is only one voice among many, and not necessarily the loudest or more influential.

Democracy is messy and doesnt necessarily produce the optimal outcomes. Academic politics is especially acrimonious, not because (in words usually attributed to Henry Kissinger) the stakes are so low, but because the battles are never simply contests over power or struggles for dominance or assertions of self-interest. These contests are ultimately about values, vision, mission and institutional priorities with a larger goal of consensus building.

At their best, colleges and universities and their departments function according to a distinctive form of shared governance, which combines the best of two distinctive conceptions of democracy: deliberative democracy and participatory democracy. In consequence, the political process and representation within that process are as important as the resulting decisions.

If campus politics isnt ultimately about mission and a broad sense of the collective good, then the academy really is nothing more than yet another corporate entity in todays callous, unfeeling bureaucratic society.

Steven Mintz is professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin.

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Democracy and Education | Higher Ed Gamma - Inside Higher Ed