Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed an amicus letter with the Texas Supreme Court in opposition to the Dallas City Council, which substantially changed ballot language in an apparent attempt to obscure the meaning of certain initiatives to voters. Texas supported the petitioners’ argument that the city’s last-minute changes and additions to language that will be on the ballot in November are misleading and do not satisfy the standard established by the court to ensure that voters know what they are voting for.
Referring to the final language approved by the City, the brief notes, “[I]t is hard to reconcile the ultimate result with this Court’s longstanding rule that ballot language should be written in a way to ‘identify the amendment and to show its character and purposes, so that the voters will be familiar with the amendment and its purposes when they cast their ballots.’”
An organization called Dallas HERO collected enough signatures to place three charter amendments on the ballot in the local election in November. The first proposed amendment would allow residents to sue the city if the local government refuses to or fails to enforce the law—and to waive its immunity to such suits. The second proposed amendment would require an annual survey of residents that would assess the city manager’s performance to inform their compensation and continued employment. The third proposed amendment would increase funding for police and firefighter salaries and pensions. By law, the city is required to add those amendments to the ballot. However, the City Council proposed additional charter amendments without explaining that their “character and purpose” was effectively to undo the charter amendments proposed by Dallas HERO. This contradicts precedent designed to protect the integrity of a ballot-initiative election.
Original source can be found here.