Suppression of Dissent in Ashcroft's America

The Monorail Recall Committee has won only a partial victory in its defense against the One-Track-Minds of The Seattle Monorail Project, who sued to stop the Recall initiative. The Monomaniacs attempted to crush dissent by claiming, ludicrously, that the ballot title on the petition was somehow "confusing". In yesterday's ruling, Judge Steven Gonzalez sawed the baby in half and ruled that the ballot title was indeed confusing and ordered the Recall campaign to revise its petitions, but that any signatures already gathered will be valid.

Here is what is printed on the old petition:

PROHIBIT NEW MONORAIL FACILITIES ON CITY STREETS

Initiative Measure Number 83 concerns the use of City rights-of-way for new monorail transit facilities

This measure would enact the following provision as City law; "From and after the effective date of this enactment, the construction, operation or use of City right-of-way for monorail transit facilities is prohibited. Any agreement, contract, permit, license, grant or other authorization for use of City right-of-way for monorail transit facilities shall be revoked and declared null and void.

The P-I article says that

Gonzalez, in his ruling, agreed with monorail officials' argument that the original title was confusing and didn't describe the initiative's intention.

What part of "PROHIBIT NEW MONORAIL FACILITIES ON CITY STREETS" would confuse the average person into thinking that the initiative will accomplish something other than, uh, prohibiting a new monorail on city streets? The Moronorail folks are simply throwing out bogus excuses to stifle legitimate opposition, and if Gonzalez were any kind of a judge he would have sanctioned them for abuse of process. Instead, he insisted on fixing the "confusing" language by adding a third instance of the word "prohibit" to the top part of the petition, in case anybody missed the other two occurrences of the word "prohibit".

At least the previously gathered signatures will be valid (unless the Monofascists sue to void them for some other fabricated reason). But invalidating signatures on old petitions from this point forward means that a large number of currently circulating petitions will be voided, and a significant amount of the Recall campaign's time and money will have been wasted.

Yet another example of the Suppression of Dissent in post-9/11 America. I blame Ashcroft!

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at June 19, 2004 05:22 PM