Philip Blumel: We’re not gonna take it. Hi, I’m Philip Blumel. Welcome to No Uncertain Terms, the official podcast of the Term Limits Movement for the week of August 22nd, 2022.
Stacey Selleck: Your sanctuary from partisan politics.
Philip Blumel: When citizens collected 46,000 signatures to put state term limits on the North Dakota ballot for November, the most signatures ever collected for a ballot measure in that state, it was seen as a triumph of direct democracy. But that was before the politicians circled their wagons to shut the voters down. Now the battle is headed to the North Dakota Supreme Court. Here to tell us about it is US Term Limits executive director, Nick Tomboulides. Hey, Nick.
Nick Tomboulides: Hello. Welcome back.
Philip Blumel: Back in March, we were talking about how citizens in North Dakota collected something like 46,000 signatures to put a initiative on the ballot that would in turn limit their legislature and their governor. And with 46,000 signatures, they only need 31,000. So they got the margin they need because there’s always some that are no good, and what have you. And so we thought we had it.
Philip Blumel: And then the secretary of state of North Dakota said that not enough of the petitions were valid, even though they had gotten a large margin extra to take care of that eventuality. So anyways, they shot it down. And this of course was seen as what it was, which is a political counterattack. Politicians don’t wanna be term limited. But now it’s coming to a head. Why don’t you give us the latest news, Nick?
Nick Tomboulides: Sure. So, it’s important to clarify that when the secretary of state disqualified the signatures, when he threw out 29,000 signatures, there was no legitimate basis for doing that. The secretary of state was… He was himself a 30 year incumbent. Initially, he had asked the sponsor of the measure to come to the Capitol for a meeting. He said, “Don’t bring your lawyer.” That’s a big red flag. Big red flag. Told him it would be a routine meeting.
Nick Tomboulides: Turned out to be anything but routine because he brought in the attorney general. And together, these two powerful politicians, these two powerful state officials, they basically tag team the sponsoring committee. They threatened, intimidated, browbeat them and told them, “We’re gonna come after you unless you withdraw this petition.” That’s before any findings had taken place. So they knew what they wanted to do from the very get go. They wanted to kill this term limits petition to protect their friends in the legislature.
Nick Tomboulides: But when the secretary was actually forced to provide his reasoning as to why he disqualified all the signatures, it was specious. I mean, he would… He threw out 4000 signatures because people would list a street name without a direction. So you’d put “326 Pine Street” instead of “326 East Pine Street”.
Nick Tomboulides: Or maybe you wrote “326 Pine” and you didn’t write “Street” or you used a dorm as an address. And so even after they verified all these people as registered voters, he still threw out their signatures with all this hocus pocus bull crap. He disqualified…
Philip Blumel: That is outrageous.
Nick Tomboulides: He disqualified like 20,000 signatures that came from one notary just because he didn’t like a few of the signatures that notary had notarised.
Philip Blumel: That’s really outrageous. I mean, as someone who has spent a lot of time on the streets petitioning for term limits in multiple states, I gotta tell you that there is patterns that show up when you’re doing these type of campaigns, and there’s always gonna be some petitions you collect that are no good, right?
Philip Blumel: Somebody they might think they’re registered to vote, but they’re not anymore, or they’re in the wrong county in some kind of… In some races or whatnot, or use the wrong zip code or stuff like that. And many courts in several states, including I think North Dakota, have already said that if it’s a valid voter and their intent was to fill out this petition, that it’s valid, even if they make just a little, puny little error.
Philip Blumel: Because this is not a application for a mortgage or for life insurance or something where every detail has to be correct. It’s basically something saying that, “Hey, I’m a voter here. Here’s some information to show I’m a voter here. I’m for putting this on the ballot.” And as long as that is shown on the petition, it should count. And it does everywhere else, I guess, except for North Dakota.
Nick Tomboulides: That’s exactly right. He found issues with 6000 signatures that may have been legitimate. So he threw out all of them. It’s like saying if you had a local election, if you find 6000 bad ballots, will you then disqualify all of the ballots and say nobody’s votes will count? It’s really a wild, kind of unhinged theory. North Dakota has some legislators who’ve been in office since the Milli Vanilli days. So this was a sensible undertaking for the Term Limits Committee, North Dakota needs Term limits.
Philip Blumel: Milli Vanilli?
Nick Tomboulides: Yeah.
Philip Blumel: Milli Vanilli. Really? [chuckle]
Nick Tomboulides: 19… What? 1980, ’99, 1990?
Philip Blumel: I guess so, yeah.
Nick Tomboulides: Back in that day. They’ve got legislators who are still in office. They’ve been in longer than I’ve been alive, and term limits are needed desperately. But the political class is trying to protect its own. They disqualified these signatures. But the good news is the committee is fighting back. A lawsuit has been filed. North Dakota Term Limits, the sponsor committee for the initiative, they have sued the secretary of state.
Nick Tomboulides: They’re asking for a writ of mandamus, which is where you ask the court to order a specific action, not asking for damages. You’re asking for the court to force the secretary of state to put this valid and legitimate term limits initiative on the ballot, this initiative that’s 100% valid. And that is gonna go straight to the state Supreme Court of North Dakota for a review. The oral argument will be Friday, September 2nd.
Philip Blumel: At a town hall meeting with voters earlier this month, US representative Byron Donalds of Florida, the US Term Limits, Congressional Pledge, Signer answered a question from a voter about term limits.
Byron Donalds: So a couple of things. One part is that you have a lot of members that have been there too long. I’m just gonna be blunt. They’ve been in Congress too long. There are accustomed. There’s really only one way to do Congressional term limits. I can’t say ’cause there are cameras in the room.
[laughter]Byron Donalds: So I gotta save some stuff. Sometimes you gotta spring on people. But anyway, the truth is you have a lot of members that have just been there too long. There are accustomed to the inertia. They’re the frog that got boiled in the pot essentially. And so they’re accustomed to the inertia. This is just what it is. And as far as they’re concerned they are focused on the one thing they get to accomplish that year, and that takes precedence over everything else.
Byron Donalds: The second part is the staff largely runs the members. Not my staff. My staff will tell you, “He does what he wants.”
[laughter]Byron Donalds: But they gimme recommendations. They’re all nodding their head, like, “Yeah, we do.” They give recommendations about like, “Yeah, that’s cool.” “No, I’m not doing that. Here’s what we’re doing.” But for a lot of members, their staff literally tell them what to do. They read the scripts to a tee of what their staff wrote.
Byron Donalds: This last bill that passed out the Senate, that wasn’t the members of the Senate writing that stuff. The members of the Senate were not sitting there going over the finer points of tax policy and climate proposals. That stuff came from think tanks and congressional staffers. That’s where that came from.
Byron Donalds: They all got cobbled together. “Here’s the deal, sir.” “Oh, okay. I can live with that, but can I get this one thing?” “Yeah, we can figure that out, sir.” “Alright, cool. Here’s the deal. It’s gonna be great for America,” blah blah. That’s… Those are the two problems we have right now in Washington. How that gets fixed is term limits.
Philip Blumel: And if they put it on the ballot, naturally it’ll win. That’s why they’re trying to fight this before it ever gets to the ballot because there’s quite certain like everywhere else that it would be successful. That’s a good initiative that the people are putting on the ballot. It’s eight-year term limits on the state legislature, eight in the House, eight in the Senate, and then also eight for the governor.
Philip Blumel: So it would make North Dakota the 36th state to put term limits on their governor and the 16th to put term limits on their state legislature. So it’s a solid proposal and they have the signatures put on the ballot and they’ll have the votes to pass it. It’s just getting through this hurdle.
Nick Tomboulides: And it’s hardly a coincidence that these same regulations which they’re trying to enforce on the petitions are regulations that were enacted by the legislature to make it impossible to petition, to make it impossible for citizens to get things on the ballot, like term limits.
Nick Tomboulides: Because the politicians want a monopoly over the law-making process. They don’t like it when pesky people like you and me, butt in with ideas like term limits, but frankly, citizen action is the only way this is ever gonna get done ’cause legislators don’t term limit themselves.
Philip Blumel: Right. And they’re really going after the petitioners. They’re trying to make it sound like these petitioners are crooks. Again, having done this, I know full well that I have collected signatures from people, I didn’t know it when they signed it, but I know that there’s no question that people have signed petitions for me where they have an error or actually are in the wrong district or whatever. And to have somebody invalidate every single one I collected because somebody handed me one that was not valid, to me is so outrageous.
Nick Tomboulides: When the Secretary of State receives these signatures, what you hope will happen is he will reach a decision based on the facts. But in this case, it looks like he made the decision first. He said, “There’s no way you term limit people are ever gonna get on the ballot,” and now he’s trying to find the facts to justify that decision. And of course, they don’t exist.
Nick Tomboulides: But what we’re seeing now is the Department of Law Enforcement in North Dakota is using… The attorney general using Gestapo tactics against some of the term limits folks. One of the petitioners who helped gather signatures in this, a guy named Charles Tuttle, just had his house raided by the North Dakota BLI. That’s their version of the FBI. This was a raid ordered by State Attorney General Drew Wrigley to try to find dirt about the signature-gathering process for term limits.
Nick Tomboulides: So what we’re seeing is intimidation tactics, Gestapo tactics, ruling-class politicians circling the wagons here to protect their power. I didn’t realise that was something that happened in democracy. And I’m starting to wonder, is this North Dakota or is this North Korea?
Philip Blumel: Yeah. Wow. Alright. Well, best wishes to the people of North Dakota, Keep up the fight. I know they have a large committee there, the North Dakota Term Limits Committee, it’s a 40-member board or something. Actually, there are several former legislators on it. It’s a lot of the movers and shakers in North Dakota are behind this effort, as well as the rank-and-file citizenry. So they have some heft behind them and I wish them the best.
Nick Tomboulides: Absolutely. But Phil, just think back to the days when you were a petitioner for term limits campaigns in so many different states, how likely would you have been to jump at that opportunity if you knew that you could face retribution from the politicians, from the state? You’re just there trying to make a living, trying to help out a good cause, and you have these powerful politicians ordering a raid of your property to try to dig up dirt on you.
Philip Blumel: Or just to throw out my efforts. Right. Would I travel across the country to do that? You’re right. It puts a chilling effect on the whole process. So it’s a very anti-democratic move that has a chilling effect well outside of the issue of term limits.
Nick Tomboulides: Absolutely. And let’s hope this issue gets cleared up very quickly and the Supreme Court makes the right decision because that will encourage other people to be fearless in pursuing reforms like this. But if it goes the other way, the consequences will be long-lasting.
Philip Blumel: We’ll follow up on this and we’ll let you know how it goes, on a future episode of No Uncertain Terms.
Philip Blumel: Thanks for joining us for another episode of No Uncertain Terms. The Term Limits Convention Bills are moving through the state legislatures. This could be a breakthrough year for the Term Limits Movement. To check on the status of the terms convention resolution in your state, go to termlimits.com/takeaction. There you will see if it has been introduced and where it stands in the commission process on its way to the floor vote.
Philip Blumel: If there’s action to take, you’ll see a “take action” button by your state. Click it. This will give you the opportunity to send a message to the most relevant legislators, urging them to support the legislation. They have to know you are watching. That’s termlimits.com/take action.
Philip Blumel: If your state has already passed the term limits convention resolution, or the bill’s not been introduced in your state, you can still help. Please consider making a contribution to US Term Limits. It’s our aim to hit the reset button on the US Congress, and you can help. Go to termlimits.com/donate. Termlimits.com/donate. Thanks. We’ll be back next week.
Stacey Selleck: The revolution isn’t being televised. Fortunately, you have the No Uncertain Terms podcast.