Paul Jacob

Because Jacob emphasizes institutional and procedural reforms—most notable being ballot initiative and referendum rights and legislative term limits—his libertarian philosophy appears more centrist than either left-libertarianism or rightist.

[1] In 1985, after being convicted of violating the Selective Service Act, he served five and a half months in federal prison, making him one of only nine American draft resisters imprisoned since the Vietnam War.

Jacob helped citizens in 23 states place limits on their congressional delegations, prompting columnist Robert Novak to call him "the most hated man in Washington.

"[citation needed] But on May 22, 1995, those state-imposed congressional term limits, encompassing nearly half the U.S. Congress, were struck down by the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of U.S.

Today, 15 state legislatures, 36 governors and thousands of local officials, including those in nine of the country's ten largest cities, are under term limits.

In 2001, Jacob started Citizens in Charge, a 501(c)(4) advocacy group dedicated to protecting the voter initiative process where it exists and expanding it to more states and localities.

CIC provided much of the funding for voter issue education in the state's 2002 legislative elections, through direct mail, television ads and radio spots.

Jacob is also founder and president of the Citizens in Charge Foundation, which works to educate the public, opinion leaders, and elected officials on the initiative and referendum process.

In 2005 and 2006, Jacob worked with an Oklahoma group, Oklahomans in Action, to place on the ballot an initiative, Stop Overspending, which is one of several measures run in different states known as the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, or TaBOR.

[11] On December 18, 2008 the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the underlying Oklahoma law that barred out of state petition circulators, noting that it was in violation of the First Amendment .