TexasCHLforum.com

TexasJohnBoy wrote:The legislative process in Texas is designed to be difficult, for a reason. Changing or creating laws should not be easy.

It's like the Constitution. It should be difficult to change for any number of reasons - not the least of which is to dampen the effects of tyranny. It also makes it harder to flip flop back and forth on laws. Law-makers find it easy to "send messages" and to burden the citizenry with lots of laws, partly because it justifies their existences. One of the things that I flat LOVE about Texas is that its legislature only meets on odd numbered years. It drastically lowers the opportunities for mischief at the taxpayers' expense. The initiative process in California completely removes the elected representation from the process of legislating, and, it makes it too easy to pass things. Sometimes that's good, but more often than not, it is bad - particularly when ballot initiatives involve budgetary matters. The voters will vote themselves almost any largess at the expense of the state, when all law is decided by direct ballot.

TEX wrote:Never though it would be easy. Let me rephrase the question. What does it take petition wise to force something onto the ballot, like can be done in California, or is that option denied to Texans. I am not taking about changing a law, but actually creating one.

Having lived most of my life in California, until moving here in 2006, believe me, you don't want the kind of initiative system California has. It has been a freaking nightmare......particularly in regard to the rights of citizens.

If Texas ever enacts a similar system, it will be the beginning of its long downhill slide into Californianism.