On Wednesday, April 12, Wyoming Secretary of State Ed Murray provided conditional approval of the final language for a citizens’ initiative to promote free and fair elections.  Wyoming citizens now has 30 days to gather and certify signatures from 100 citizen sponsors before gathering signatures from all over the state to put this initiative on the ballot in 2018.

“Getting a measure on the ballot in Wyoming is very difficult, and has not been done successfully in at least 20 years. But we are confident that the voters are overwhelmingly behind this effort, and we look forward to helping those voters rise up and demand that dark money be banished from our political system,” said Kenneth Chestek, law professor and Chair of Wyoming Promise.

The initiative would call on Congress to propose a 28^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution specifying that the right of political speech is a right enjoyed only by natural persons, and that the proposed amendment to the United States Constitution to specify that Congress and state legislatures may regulate all moneys raised and spent for political purposes, whether from artificial persons or natural persons, including by prohibiting artificial persons from political spending.  If Congress fails to propose a 28^th Amendment, the act would call for a limited Constitutional convention to accomplish the purpose of the act.

So far 18 states and over 740 cities and towns have passed 28^th Amendment resolutions with cross-partisan support.  In Montana and Colorado, voters have approved 28^th Amendment ballot initiatives by 75-25%. In November, Washington State became the 18^th State to call for the 28^th Amendment, with a voter initiative passing by wide margins in every region and every Congressional district of the state.

In a letter to Wyoming citizens, former Senator Alan Simpson calls on Wyoming citizens to stand “firmly on the right side of this fight for the future of our democracy” and he urges them to “support a 28th Amendment to the Constitution so we can have reasonable limits on election spending, reform pay-to-play politics, and secure human liberty and equal representation rather than turn our government over to a global corporate marketplace.”

Wyoming Promise is working with American Promise, a national non-partisan, non-profit organization that isspearheading a 50-state Citizen Uprising for one goal: the 28th Amendment to get big money out of politics. American Promise inspires, empowers, and organizes Americans from across the political spectrum to build support for the 28^th Amendment community by community, state by state, to drive the Amendment out of Congress and to the States for ratification.