Court puts anti-casino question on ballot

Gotta be self-supporting

What a great community we live in where some lady can make up lies and the public just believes what she says and effectively bans an industry.

That should be scary to any person who has a job. That's an ugly precedent.

We had casinos as a open ballot question in MA. I might have grossly misremembered that.

That fat piece of crap didn't even return my phone call to his office. I would love to get a ballot question regarding a repeal of mandatory health insurance too.

On whether or not there was a statewide yes or no vote on having casinos. Well, when we do have one, I will vote "yes."

... the legislature is also free to over-ride citizen-approved referenda (subject only to possible political costs).

The casino law would never been approved absent blatant strong-arming by the brand new Speaker, Rep. De Leo. How I wish we could have a referendum on whether he should, in fact, remain Speaker of the House.

And I believe it is informative:

http://ballotpedia.org/Laws_governing_the_initiati...

If you want to get going on the beer and wine in grocery stores thing, I still have maps and a project plan that worked in the past. I'll happily be the first signature AND pass along my collateral.

... in order for it to get on the ballot. You're thinking of state constitutional amendments, which require approval of 25% of two successive legislatures. But this is a statutory initiative with no such requirement.

But come on, people. This is less than a decade old.

According to the SJC, people have a right, under the Massachusetts Constitution, to marry people of the same gender. Therefore, the only way to change that is to change the Constitution. The process of amendment involves either a vote of 2 Constitutional Conventions (the General Court sitting as one body) or a combination of CC votes and petition signatures (I'm too lazy to look up the exact numbers.)

Those that wanted to satisfy the possible unconstitutionality of banning same sex marriage made sure that existing marriages would be unaffected. That is the issue with this proposed referendum question, though I don't see how they could or would allow existing casinos were they successful.

But no, the second element, the Constitutional Convention, that is why there was never a vote in Massachusetts on gay marriage.

I was around when that one came up. The AG actually certified the question (with gritted teeth and holding her nose, I hope) and it passed to the legislative approval stage. The group got one pass from the Legislature in Constitutional Convention, but the next year the Legislature just failed to vote on it before closing out the ConCon. You need two positive votes to get on the ballot, so it was a no-go.

If we're making predictions, that's what I suspect will happen here, too. The two year, two vote process gives legislators lots of time to dance around on an issue and voters lots of time to forget about it.

Art. XVII. The people have a right to keep and to bear arms for the common defence.