Effort by Arizona lawmakers could keep more voter initiatives off the ballot

SCR 1015, approved Wednesday by the Senate Government Committee, would modify existing constitutional provisions that allow a new statute to be proposed and voted on if they gather the signatures equal to 10% of the people who voted in the last governmental election. Based on 2022 turnout, that would be 255,867 to put a measure on the 2024 election.

Instead, under SCR 1015, initiative proponents would need to get 10% of those who voted in each of the 30 legislative districts. And that effectively would mean that something unpopular in even just one legislative district could not be placed on the ballot, no matter how much support there is in the rest of the state.

Sen. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, declined to call it a veto power. But he said that any measure should have a certain amount of statewide buy-in before going on the ballot.

And Mesnard said that’s particularly true given that nothing in his measure changes the fact that a simple majority at a general election is all that is needed to approve an initiative. And that means residents of just a few areas — or perhaps just one county — can impose their will on the rest of the state.

At least part of what is behind the measure is that legislative Republicans and the business interests that support them generally do not like voters making their own laws. Instead, they prefer a process of lining up votes at the Capitol, a process that for decades has been pretty much dominated by Republicans.

But the legislative process also has worked to block measures that business interests do not want. And that, in turn, has forced voters to go to the ballot.

That’s precisely what happened in 2006 and again in 2016 when voters decided that Arizona workers should have a minimum wage higher than the $7.25 required under federal law, a figure that has not changed since 2009. Arizona now has a minimum wage of $13.85 an hour.

There are other examples of Arizonans taking matters into their own hands when lawmakers refused to act.

In 1994, voters approved a ban on leghold traps, snares and poisons on public lands over the objections of hunters and some rural residents. Four years later, after lawmakers refused to take up the issue, foes of cockfighting got a ban on the ballot and got it approved.

And in 2006, voters decided that farmers could no longer keep pigs in gestation and calves in confinement crates. Now, groups like the Arizona Farm Bureau Federation, which unsuccessfully fought that measure, support what Mesnard is trying to do.

Mesnard said his proposal simply provides some balance.

Consider, Mesnard said, the fact that more than 60% of Arizona residents live in Maricopa County.

“So they can put something on the ballot, ram it through, and the rest of the state may not like it,” Mesnard said. “And it’s sort of like, too bad.”

Requiring a proposal to get a certain number of signatures from each of the 30 districts before being placed on the ballot, he said, shows “interest in a broader appeal from the start.”

That sentiment was echoed by Jenna Bentley, a lobbyist for the generally pro-business Goldwater Institute.

“Usually what we end up seeing is proponents (of initiatives) will gather signatures in the largest cities,” she said.

“That’s a little bit problematic,” Bentley told lawmakers. “Then we see our rural counties have very little say of what appears on the ballot.”

Complicating matters, she said, is the Voter Protection Act, a constitutional provision that precludes lawmakers from repealing or tinkering with what has been approved at the ballot. And that pretty much makes the only way to make major changes is to take the issue back to the voters.

And Mesnard said it’s not like one legislative district would get to veto what everyone else wants. He said SCR 1015 simply requires backers of an initiative to find at least 10% of voters in each district willing to put a measure up for a vote.

But Sen. Priya Sundareshan, D-Tucson, said it’s not that simple.

“I still do have some concerns, though, about the ability for something that might be really necessary statewide to be held up by one particular legislative district in which they might be completely out of step with the rest of the state or perhaps in a different position of interest,” she said.

And then, Sundareshan said, there is the administrative burden.

Arizona law already requires initiative petitions to be separated by the county in which they are collected. That is designed to facilitate checking signatures for validity.

With this, Sundareshan said, circulators would have to further divide petitions into batches by legislative districts. And some legislative districts span multiple counties.

In getting Republican lawmakers to approve his measure, Mesnard pointed out that voters would get the last word in 2024. That’s because the change in SCR 1015 amends the Arizona Constitution and constitutional amendments can be made only with voter approval.