CapitolBeatOK Staff Report

Published: 29-Jul-2010

Patrick B. McGuigan, editor of CapitolBeatOK, will participate in a media panel at a U.S. Conference on Initiative & Referendum. The conference, including the panel of veteran journalists and analysts, is a prelude to the Global Forum on Direct Democracy in San Francisco.

The conference and forum are being held at the University of California’s Hastings College of Law, running from July 30 to August 4.

McGuigan is the author of “The Politics of Direct Democracy: Case Studies in Popular Decision Making,” a 1985 book that included a forward by Michael Barone, then a reporter for The Washington Post. For 10 years, McGuigan was editor of The Initiative & Referendum Report, which was then the nation’s leading authority on the politics of ballot measures, recalls and other direct citizen activism.

Presently, McGuigan is also senior editor for
The City Sentinel, a weekly newspaper in Oklahoma City, and capitol editor for Tulsa Today, an online news service.

Other journalists on the media panel, slated for this Saturday, July 31, will include Jon Fleischman of the
Flash Report, Robert Green of the Los Angeles Times, Dan Morain of the Sacramento Bee, Joe Mathews (author of “The People’s Machine” and a long-time analyst of direct democracy), Jane Hamsher of Fire Dog Lake, a web-based news site that focuses on public corruption, and Joel Fox, of Fox and Hounds Daily.

Panel moderator Joel Fox said the panel will include a focus on “initiative and referendum in the court of public opinion.”

Citizens in Charge Foundation, a national voter rights group focused on the ballot initiative and referendum process and a sponsor of the Global Forum, will hold a press conference this Friday in San Francisco to release findings from research into three different areas of the citizen initiative process: petition signature fraud, a look at the impact of campaign spending in California’s 2008 election cycle, and polling to determine public support for initiative and referendum in every one of the 50 states.

Citizens in Charge Foundation, together with the Initiative and Referendum Institute Europe, is hosting the 2010 Global Forum and the U.S. Conference. Events begin Friday evening with a reception and continue through the afternoon of Wednesday, August 4.

Over 300 scholars, citizen activists, elected officials and others have registered for the event to discuss the future of direct democracy in California, the U.S. and around the globe. The conference is free and open to the public.

Citizens in Charge Foundation describes itself as the only national “transpartisan”  voter rights group dedicated to protecting and expanding the ballot initiative and referendum process. For more information, visit 
www.CitizensInChargeFoundation.org.