Would Arizona voters agree to limit their power? Maybe, if they got this

Not every effort to restrict citizens-led initiatives is meritless. Or even unpopular.

The 2022 election offered ample proof.

Arizonans approved two of the three initiatives to tighten standards — one requiring 60% approval or more on ballot measures to raise taxes, the other limiting them to a single subject.

While I had reservations of varying degrees about all three proposals, I believe Arizonans got it right.

Will they do so again with the latest Legislature-referred measure to curb voters’ powers of redress?

All 30 districts would need signatures

The 2024 ballot proposal makes gathering signatures to qualify a citizens-led initiative that much more difficult.

Voters have greater reasons to be skeptical this time.

To qualify a measure for the ballot now, citizens need the signatures of 10% of the turnout in the most recent gubernatorial election. For constitutional amendments, the percentage goes up to 15%.

There are no restrictions on where the signatures are gathered.

In practice, backers concentrate on Maricopa, Pima and a handful of other populous counties because they get the best bang for their buck spent on petition-circulators.

The initiative referred by the Legislature would mandate that the 10% and 15% threshold on signatures are met in all 30 legislative districts.

That could hurt progressive efforts

That’s no insignificant change.

Proponents like Sen. J.D. Mesnard see the initiative as a way to even the playing field for voters in more rural counties who don’t get much of a say.

It is also a way to blunt progressive movements, which tend to use the ballot box to effect policy change — for example, legalizing recreational marijuana and the tax-the-rich scheme to fund education in 2020; and limiting interest rates on debt and debt collection in 2022.

Proponents said as much when similar legislation was introduced back in 2017, months after a union-backed movement got the minimum-wage Proposition 206 passed.

It's already tough to get on the ballot

It is already tough to qualify a measure for the ballot.

A number of them fail to secure the required signatures; a few get challenged in court and disqualified under a higher standard of “strict compliance” set by the Legislature in 2017.

Technicalities such as the wrong paper size or font size can disqualify a measure.

In the last six elections, there have been only 11 citizens initiatives on the ballot. The Legislature, meanwhile, referred 29 of their own.

And while most of the 11 measures are liberal causes, they don’t always pass — think renewable energy mandates in 2018 and a 1-cent sales-tax increase to fund education and public transportation in 2012.

Or Invest in Education, which was ruled unconstitutional after its passage.

Neighboring states have it easier

The argument is well taken that other states, including neighboring Utah and Colorado, have similar requirements to gather signatures by legislative districts. But it fails to note important nuances.

Colorado, for instance, requires signatures of only 5% of the most recent election turnout — half of Arizona’s. Utah calls for 8%.

Colorado also requires the approval by two-thirds of the state House and Senate before lawmakers can refer a proposed statute or constitutional amendment to the ballot — not just a simple majority as in the case of Arizona.

The last point is not insignificant.

The three measures relating to the initiative process that the Arizona Legislature referred in 2022 — as is the signature-distribution measure for 2024 — advanced on party-line votes. (Ditto for three of the four legislatively referred measures on the 2024 ballot.)

Want to sell the idea? Make this change

That’s to say, the Republican-controlled Legislature has historically sought to limit the citizens initiative process in Arizona as a counterweight against popular liberal causes.

If the Legislature aims to shut down contrarian ideas and prevent voters from setting policy, then requiring 15-county signature collection will serve those objectives.

But if the check-and-balance between citizens and the legislative branch is important, the proposal is sorely wanting.

Another view: This initiative would scrap partisan primaries

There is a way for Republican lawmakers to sell the idea of signature minimums in all 15 counties: Permit online signatures for initiatives.

It is neither an impractical nor ineffective solution.

The state has for the better part of 10 years permitted candidates for legislative, statewide or federal office to gather via the web all the signatures necessary to qualify for the ballot.

Online signatures could help us all

E-Qual is a safe, secure system that allows voters to sign candidate petitions, using their name, date of birth and a driver’s license number — or alternatively, a voter ID number and the last four digits of their Social Security number.

With adjustments, there’s no reason to deny citizens the same technological tool for direct democracy.

Too much too fast?

Set limits to the percentage of permitted web signatures for initiatives, like the ones imposed on candidates until 2016 (it used to be 50% of the total required).

E-Qual would also greatly lessen the dependence and influence of deep-pocketed special interests — the ones that can afford to spend millions to pay petition circulators to secure signatures by hand.

Initiative campaigns would not have an excuse, financial or otherwise, to skip rural Arizonans.

We lost an opportunity to introduce such a system during the pandemic, when public health concerns all but shut down personal interactions, including those by petition circulators. (The state Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that electronic signatures required a constitutional amendment.)

If Republican state lawmakers are serious about ensuring that voters everywhere have the opportunity to participate in the initiative process, and they’re serious about wanting Arizonans to codify it in the 2024 election, they should approve online-signature initiative petitions.

They would have to do so by referring a constitutional amendment to the ballot - to rid the requirement that petitions must be signed in the presence of an affiant.

It would help convince skeptics that the signature-distribution concept is not a Trojan horse.

Reach Abe Kwok at akwok@azcentral.com. On Twitter: @abekwok.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona ballot initiatives already face hurdles. Why make them higher?