Process concerning alcohol elections explained
There have been a lot of passionate opinions, confusing information and accusations going around about the “Wet/Dry” local alcohol option petitions that were recently circulated inside the Canton city limits. And there will continue to be more right up thru Election Day in November. As your mayor, I’d like to present the facts so everyone knows why the city will have to order a wet/dry election.
This information is pretty much directly from the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission website. The only thing I had done is to translate parts of it from “legalese” to plain English for easier understanding.
Article XVI, § 20, of the Texas Constitution contains provisions which allow any dry area the right to become wet by citizens voting in an election which has been legally ordered and held for that purpose under present laws. Houchins v. Plainos, 110 S.W.2d 549, 553 (Tex. 1937)
First, a minimum of only 10 qualified voters of the city are needed to make an application. [Secs. 501.023, 501.024, 501.025] A "qualified voter" is a registered voter who lives in the city limits. When the application is approved—and this is per constitutional law--the city secretary must provide blank petition pages to the petitioners for them to use to get signatures calling for a local election. This is a right of the people and clearly defined in the Texas Constitution, so don’t go hollering it should have been stopped—it can’t.
Section 501.032 provides that the number of required signatures depends on the kind of local option liquor election the petitioners are seeking. The number of signatures required to be on a petition is a percentage based on voter turnout in the most recently general or gubernatorial election, not the current number of registered voters in the city. That number was determined by state law to be 244 signatures. The Canton Economic Growth Committee, aka the petitioners, turned in about 500 signatures and expect as many as 300 to be verified. As to that number, if you voted in the last gubernatorial election 2 years ago, you helped to make that number larger. If you didn’t, you helped to make that number lower.
The petitioners have 60 days to gather signatures and present it to the city thru the Canton City Secretary. The secretary then has the responsibility of verifying the signatures to make sure all who signed are registered and do actually live in the city limits. [Sec. 501.031] Once the required verified number is met, the city council must, by law, call an election. This is part of the democratic process called initiative.
I digress here just a bit to explain initiative. If a city has the Home Rule form of government, the people have 3 big powers/rights: 1) referendum—simply put, that’s the government asking the people thru an election if they want a particular law or not. Great Britain is having one about staying or leaving the European Union, 2) initiative—a group of people telling the government that they want a law and the government must respond by calling an election to see if it really is what the majority wants, and 3) recall—the power to hold an election to “un-elect” an official. Canton is a General Law city governed by the Texas Constitution so the people have little right to referendum or initiative and none for recall. The only subject open to initiative that I am familiar with is the wet/dry issue. It’s called an initiative because it must come from the people, not elected officials, and it’s not easy to do to be in compliance with all the legal requirements. When explaining this to my government classes, I told my students that they had to have initiative to elect to take the 8:00 am government class because they had to get up really early to be on time for class.
The Texas Constitution [Sec. 41.001(a)] sets the city’s wet/dry election for November, 8, which is the same day we elect a president this year. The council is expecting to see this issue on the July council agenda. Again, the council is so ordered to call the election by Texas Constitution, so don’t believe someone who goes around claiming that your city leaders are leading you down the road to perdition. This date assures there should be a good voter turn-out so that the decision will be made by the majority of voters—whatever that decision turns out to be. And yes, there will be early voting.
I did get a call about the petitioner group so I want to clarify for everyone: The group which started the petition named themselves The Canton Economic Growth Committee. It has NO connection to the city, and it does NOT have any connection to the Canton Economic Development Corporation.
And as to First Monday, you don’t see people walking around First Monday now “sucking on beer bottles” and you won’t it if it passes. All city property is off limits to alcohol. Is it there? According to Councilman Stewart, yes. Does the city go around smelling of people’s drink cups? No. Do First Monday people have a problem if they are walking around with a beer/wine bottle and/or if they have had too much to drink? Yes, and that won’t change no matter how the election goes. Our city is committed to keeping First Monday family friendly. FYI—we don’t allow pornography, drugs or drug paraphernalia, distasteful entertainment or things like Ninja killing stars to be sold at First Monday either.
This is a passionate issue on both the “for” and “against” sides. I do understand the frustration of people on both sides who have no power to control this issue in their lives because they do not live inside our city and thus have no vote. This is an issue for the citizens of Canton, and the citizens are the only ones who have the real power to decide what goes on in their city. As to your city government, neither I nor the council, have any more, or less, real power than any other citizen and that power is our right to vote. It’s obvious there are many different visions for the future of our city and I ask for everyone to carefully evaluate everything you hear and read before you vote. But, the rubber meets the road at the ballot box. Make sure you are registered to vote, and then do it because unlike some past presidential elections, the simple majority in this election will win. And that, my fellow citizens, is American democracy in action, like it or not.
Lou Ann Everett
Mayor, City of Canton
