Urge Legislators: Oppose bills making Citizens' Initiative process more difficult

Uphill battle for Citizens' Initiative to become a law

This week in the state legislature there are bills being heard in the House and Senate floors making it even harder to pass citizens initiatives. HCR2014 AND SCR1025. Please, take a minute to reach out to your Senator and Representatives using the two Sierra Club forms included below. If you are signed up for the Request to Speak system you can also weigh in on SB1094 by Wednesday morning. 

The Arizona House is proposing to pass HCR2014 initiative; referendum; signatures; legislative districts (Dunn). It refers to the ballot a measure to require an initiative petition to be signed by 10 percent of the qualified electors for an initiative measure or 15 percent for a constitutional amendment in each Legislative District, rather than just statewide. This would make it more cumbersome and expensive to do ballot measures.

Please ask your representatives to oppose HCR2014!

https://act.sierraclub.org/actions/Arizona?actionId=AR0353601

Please ask your Senator to oppose SCR1025 initiative; referendum; legislative districts; signatures (Leach). It refers to the ballot a measure to require an initiative petition to be signed by 10 percent of the qualified electors for an initiative measure or 15 percent for a constitutional amendment in each Legislative District, rather than statewide. This would make it more cumbersome and expensive to do ballot measures.

Please send a message to your senator today to opposed SCR1025!

https://act.sierraclub.org/actions/Arizona?actionId=AR0353602

There is another bill making more difficult to enact a Citizens Initiative being heard in the House Committee on Government and Elections at 9:00 AM Wednesday, March 2nd. Log onto the Request to Speak system to weigh in on SB1094. 

• SB1094 petition signatures; description; invalidity (Mesnard: Leach) voids the signature of anyone who signs an initiative or referendum petition without either hearing or reading the initiative or referendum description printed on the petition. What if the person had previously read or knew about the measure and specifically went to sign the petition? Why would they need to read a short description? We don’t require anyone to read about or know anything about an elected official before signing their petition, why for a ballot measure? When you sign a petition, you are merely saying you think it should be considered by the voters and not that you fully endorse it. This bill will result in more signatures being tossed and again make it more difficult and more expensive to put a measure on the ballot. OPPOSE

MORE INFORMATION:

For decades, Arizona legislators have run measures aimed at decimating our state’s initiative and referendum process that allow voters to make law directly. These bills from the Legislature not only dismantle our rights, harm education and workers, but they can potentially harm animals, including wildlife, parks and natural areas on a large scale.

Arizona’s ballot measure process is a constitutional right enacted at statehood in 1912. One of our founders’ biggest concerns was the right to pass laws through initiatives. The first initiative passed in Arizona recognized women’s right to vote.

Thanks to grassroots ballot measures, the Arizona Heritage Fund to provide dollars for parks and wildlife was passed in 1990, and leghold traps, snares, and poisons were banned on public lands in 1994. Cockfighting was outlawed in 1998. In 2006, voters prohibited the cruel confinement of pregnant pigs and calves raised for veal in industrial agriculture operations. All of these measures failed in the Legislature, yet were passed by Arizona voters, most by large margins. Voters have also approved increases to minimum wage and funding for healthcare and education.

Unfortunately, HCR2015 initiatives; supermajority vote; requirement (Dunn) passed out of the House 31-28-1. It refers to the ballot a measure that would require a super-majority (60%) approval rather than simple majority approval for all ballot measures. This is a high threshold and will limit opportunities to address important environmental, animal, and social justice issues via the initiative process. This bill will go through the committee process in the Senate.