The next time a liberal friend of yours tells you the American people believe corporate money in politics is a winning issue for Democrats, you can simply point out that in deep-blue liberal bastion of the District of Columbia that organizers of a petition drive to ban corporate donations fell short of the threshold for getting the issue on November's ballot.
That's right, as Mike DeBonis of the Washington Post reported today, the D.C. Board of Elections "invalidated about 9,000 of those [signatures], leaving them short of the 23,298 valid signatures required to appear on the ballot." DeBonis noted that "[t]he signatures were tossed out for a variety of reasons — belonging to unregistered voters, duplicating other valid signatures, missing addresses, having addresses that don’t match voter records, and illegibility. All told, the effort came up 1,726 signatures short."
All is not lost, but chances are the effort will not go forward this time around. In fact, "[t]he backers have 10 business days in which to challenge the board’s determination in D.C. Superior Court."
Petition organizer Bryan Weaver said “there’s definitely an element of voter intent, he said. There are 3,100 people in the District who wanted this but moved or put down the wrong address. These people are in the system, they’re registered voters, but their addresses are different from what’s on file.” I doubt it.
It's fascinating how in one of the most liberal cities in the country, they failed to get an initiative on the ballot that galvanizes the progressive left. It's embarrassing that in a city with virtually no resident Republicans, let alone conservative ones, they couldn't find enough liberal voters to put this on the ballot.
