As four citizen-introduced propositions make their way to the voters of the city of Dallas in November, one city official may have an interest in changing the ballot language: City Attorney Tammy Palomino.
Citizen-driven petitions ask signers to approve not just an issue but specific language for how the issue will appear on the ballot. In other municipalities in Texas, city attorneys have taken petition language and adjusted it, potentially thwarting the will of the tens of thousands of residents who signed the petitions.
Further, the true language introduced in the petition is changed to be deliberately confusing. One previous example of this type of malfeasance was related to Austin’s Proposition B a few years ago. The original text that the petitioners endorsed with their signatures was concise and clear, yet it morphed into confusing language by the time it appeared on the ballot. Voters were left uncertain, and many may have voted against their own interests due to these unnecessary alterations.
The City of Austin lost a lawsuit in 2021 before the Texas Supreme Court, which determined the council enacted misleading ballot language for a citizen-led petition organized by the group Save Austin Now.
“[City leaders] all play games with ballot language,” Matt Mackowiak, co-founder of Save Austin Now, previously told The Dallas Express. “Cities don’t like citizen petitions because it reduces their power. It reduces their ability to control policy and to control decisions. It can be a very effective tool because it becomes a check on the powers of the city council and mayor.”
Dallas’ City Charter instructs that propositions are put on the ballot “in a manner so as to apprise the voters of the nature of the proposed ordinance and contain two propositions so that they may vote either “for” or “against” the propositions indicating their preference on the ordinance.” In other Texas cities, the City Attorney has a role in providing guidance as to whether or not the language meets that standard.
Representatives of Dallas HERO, a bipartisan initiative that seeks to amend the Dallas City Charter, claim to have crafted their ballot language to carefully match this requirement. Dallas HERO conducted a poll, obtained by DX, that revealed residents would take action against the city council if its members attempted to skirt citizen-driven petitions.
“City councils in Texas have a history of playing political games with citizen-led charter amendments — often using tactics like placing the amendments on the ballot with confusing or misleading language or hijacking the amendments to make charter changes at odds with the will of their citizens, or even outright denying the legitimate charter amendments to be placed on the ballot,” the poll stated, setting up the question of how surveyed residents would respond to such behavior.
The results showed that 13% said they would take legal action, 42% would vote against city council members in future elections, 15% would call, visit, send letters, or speak at city council meetings on the issue, 20% would initiate a recall against city council members, and 8% would organize neighborhood or community action.
A whopping 43% of respondents said they would engage in all the listed actions, while only 9% said they would do nothing.
The poll, conducted by Ascend Action, surveyed 1,015 Dallas residents. It has a margin of error of 3.08%.