Arrested for petitioning

Remember TASC? The Tax and Spending Control initiative had more than enough signatures from Nevada voters to land a spot on the 2006 ballot. Modeled after Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights, the proposed constitutional amendment would have required the electorate’s approval for tax increases and government spending beyond caps tied to population growth and inflation.

The petition enraged the state’s public employee unions and political elites and they had their allies on the Nevada Supreme Court remove the initiative from the ballot over a typographical discrepancy.

Oklahoma officials took a similar approach — but went a step further. When conservative political activists qualified their own Taxpayer Bill of Rights for the Sooner State ballot, the government establishment didn’t stop hunting following a successful appeal. No, after having the courts spike the initiative, Oklahoma’s attorney general had the lead petitioner locked up on felony charges that carry up to 10 years in prison.

As The Wall Street Journal detailed in a Monday editorial, Paul Jacob, president of the pro-initiative group Citizens in Charge, is accused of violating a state law that requires all signature collectors to be Oklahoma residents. Mr. Jacob’s group gathered more than 300,000 valid signatures when only 219,000 were needed to qualify the initiative for the ballot. But the petitions were tossed because although the signatures represented the will of “permanent” residents, many of the people who collected them were “temporary” residents.

Oklahoma has no laws prohibiting political advertisements or signs produced outside the state. Nor does it have laws that forbid candidates from hiring campaign workers and consultants from other states.

The law Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson is using to prosecute Mr. Jacob is being challenged in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court should toss the residency requirement and end this malicious prosecution of Mr. Jacob.

“The response is Draconian and intended to scare and intimidate,” Mr. Jacob told The Wall Street Journal. “To get 10 years in prison for following what you understand to be the rules of the petition drive would send a chilling message, not only throughout Oklahoma but throughout the country. That’s not what we want people to be thinking about when they consider whether to join a campaign to reform their government.”

As TASC- and TABOR-type initiatives become more popular with voters disgusted with the growth of government, the ruling elite will pull no punches in keeping measures that limit their power from becoming law. Oklahoma’s reckless disregard of the First Amendment right to petition government for redress of grievances is a travesty.