Lawmakers to consider another measure to limit voter initiatives

PHOENIX — Republican lawmakers are teeing up yet another measure designed to throw hurdles in the path of Arizonans who want to craft their own laws.

The latest plan, set for debate Wednesday in the House Appropriations Committee, would require initiative backers to gather signatures in each of the state’s 30 legislative districts.

The number from each area would have to be in proportion to the number of votes cast there for governor at the last election. And if residents from any one of those areas balked, the measure would never get to the ballot.

Rep. Don Shooter, R-Yuma, the driving force behind HCR 2029, said that’s precisely the purpose of the measure. He said right now it’s too easy for people with money to put issues up for a vote.

“If George Soros writes a check for $2.5 million, it’s on the ballot,” he said Monday of the billionaire who has supported liberal ballot measures in some states like requiring background checks when guns are bought and sold. “That’s a problem to me.”

But what Shooter touts as an advantage, Rep. Ken Clark, D-Phoenix, sees as a hit to the democratic process of majority rule.

“You could put yourself in a situation where the vast majority of Arizonans want something to happen but one district can hold everything up,” he said.

What HCR 2029 would do is make the process of gathering signatures more difficult — and more expensive for groups that need to hire paid circulators.

Under constitutional requirements it takes the signatures of 10 percent of people who voted in the last gubernatorial election to put a change in law before voters. Based on the 2014 vote total of 1,506,416, that threshold is now 150,642.

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Shooter’s point is that all those signatures could be gathered in just one county — most likely Maricopa where 60 percent of the state’s more than 3.6 million registered voters are located.

Under his plan, if 50,000 of the people who voted for governor came from his legislative district, then 5,000 of the 150,642 signatures would need to come from that district. And the same scenario would play out 29 more times across the state.

“It gives the people more say-so,” Shooter said. And he said it ensures that anything that gets on the ballot has a certain buy-in statewide.

“If Maricopa County decided the wanted to put a referral (to voters) to steal everybody else in the state’s water, the rural counties have something to say about it,” he said. “They can have an organized resistance in their county.”

The same change in where petitions have to be circulated would apply to constitutional amendments, which require the signatures of 15 percent of those who voted in the gubernatorial race to get on the ballot. And it also would affect the referendum process where people opposed to something the Legislature enacted can put it on “hold” until the next general election by gathering the signatures of 5 percent of voters.

Clark questioned whether the measure would survive a legal challenge.

The proposal is the latest in a series of Republican-crafted measures working their way through the legislative process in the wake of voter approval in November of an initiative to hike the state minimum wage. Other changes include bans on paid circulators, new rules that initiative circulators would need to follow and giving state lawmakers more power to overrule what voters have enacted.

Julie Erfle of AZ Schools Now, which is fighting these measures, said this is no better.