Two non-binding questions on November ballot

[ron_newman]

By now, everyone should know that that November's ballot has three statewide binding questions. But if you live in Denise Provost's state rep district (27th Middlesex, covering about half of Somerville), your ballot will also contain these two non-binding "public policy" questions:

Question 4: Shall the state representative from this district be instructed to vote in favor of a non-binding resolution calling on the federal government to support the right of all people, including non-Jewish Palestinian citizens of Israel, to live free from laws that give more rights to people of one religion than another? (EDIT: This is also on the ballot in Alice Wolf's 25th Middlesex district, covering about half of Cambridge.)

Question 5: Shall the state representative from this district be instructed to vote in favor of amending the state Constitution to replace the state Legislature with 100 randomly selected adult residents of the Commonwealth, each serving a one-year term, to be called the Commonwealth Jury and to have all the legislative and other powers of the current Legislature?

Question 4 is the Somerville Divestment Project's latest local campaign; you can read here and here about the two (failed) questions they put on the 2006 ballot. Regardless of the merits of their proposals, I strongly dislike the way this organization operates and the way they attempt to divide Somerville residents.

I haven't a clue who's behind Question 5. Perhaps someone who's a fan of ancient Greek democracies, and wants to try replicating their structures here? EDIT: No, actually it's this guy who doesn't even live in Somerville.

(If you live in Cambridge, Medford, or Arlington, you may have different non-binding questions than the ones I listed here. Any 200 voters can put questions like this on the ballot.)

Comments

[cos]

You'd think he might want to start first with his home district.

Maybe, maybe not. There's no particular reason why one's own district is a better place to start than any other. With the anti-Patriot Act question I initiated, we focused on districts where we could find motivated volunteers to collect signatures. Those did not happen to include the district I was living in at the time (Tom Stanley's in Waltham).

The ACLU also wanted to focus on districts where they thought we had a good chance of winning, which is why we punted on some Worcester districts where they had people who could've collected signatures. I think they were wrong, and that we could've won anywhere we managed to get it on the ballot. It turned out that we won all the districts we did get on the ballot on, including one where the ACLU was worried, and all of them by large margins.

But those are basically the main criteria for something like this: Where do you think you have a chance, and/or where can you get people to collect signatures.

Perhaps his involvement with the SDP is the key clue here, if he and they cooperated somehow on signature gathering.