Missouri Initiative

Missouri OKs UFO initiative
Cosmiverse, March 29, 2000

In what may be a first for the UFO disclosure movement, the State of Missouri has approved a ballot initiative to crack government secrecy. The Missouri secretary of state has certified ballot petition language that would ask voter approval of a proclamation to urge congressional action for "ending the government cover up of the UFO experience." Organizers of the Missouri initiative, the local affiliate of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), say they have until May 7 to gather 75,000 signatures to place the question on the fall general election ballot. Bruce Widaman, who's spearheading the effort, termed it " a grassroots means for empowering the voters to legislate statutory change." To meet the state's May 7 deadlines, he said, " we have to round up at least 500 signature-gathering volunteers."

The group is setting up a donations banking account at MUFON headquarters in Texas (http://www.mufon.com) to help support the project. Missouri is one of 16 states with a full initiative process. Wideman said the group hopes that other states will follow Missouri's lead in what he called "the Year of UFO Awareness." The other 15 states that could send a stronger message to Congress through the initiative process, he said, are Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. The MUFON Network's George Filer reported Tuesday that numerous UFO researchers worldwide view this initiative as a formal means for gaining (and expressing) the sense of the electorate on a vital public issue: "If indeed the Earth is being visited by alien spacecraft, then we have a right to know and the government has the duty to tell,"Widaman said.