The Secretary of State has posted another potential initiative for the 2020 ballot—my initiative on initiative and referendum! Technically, we should call an initiative about initiatives a meta-initiative, right?
On Thursday, August 23, I submitted a twenty-section initiative designed to repeal most of the attacks that Republicans in the 2018 Legislature enacted against our power of initiative and referendum. I also included some ideas about candidate petitions. Here’s my summary of the main points:
- Get rid of the personal information and compelled speech the state requires people circulating ballot measure petitions to hand out [Sections 1, 2, & 3].
- Stop the Legislature from using bogus “emergency clauses” to prevent citizens from referring a bad law [Section 4].
- Stop the Board of Elections from limiting the scope of ballot measures through tricky page and font rules [Sections 4 & 5].
- Allow measures approved by the voters to take effect when the voters say so instead of letting the legislature delay them until July [Section 6].
- Restore citizens’ ability to challenge the Secretary of State’s certification and rejection of petitions [Sections 7 & 8].
- Repeal intrusive circulator paperwork requirements intended to stifle grassroots petition efforts [Sections 9 & 10].
- Allow the Legislative Research Council to fully explain its fiscal analyses of initiatives [Section 11].
- Eliminate the Attorney General’s explanation of initiatives, which too often becomes a political and courtroom football [Section 12].
- Reduce from 60 days to five days the period that the Attorney General can delay circulation of initiative petitions [Section 12].
- Repeal the four-month delay the Legislature added to the initiative process [Section 13].
- Repeal the unnecessary single-subject rule for initiatives [Section 14].
- Make all petitions available for free online for public review [Section 15].
- Require the Secretary of State to more thoroughly examine signatures on ballot question petitions [Sections 16 & 17].
- Allow candidates for Legislature to file their nominating petitions at their local courthouse [Section 18].
- Repeal random sampling and require the Secretary of State to review all signatures on statewide nominating petitions [Section 19].
- Require election officials to more thoroughly review nominating petitions for legislative and county candidates [Section 20].
On September 5 (a full seven business days sooner than he had to respond—kudos to LRC for fast action!), Legislative Research Council director Jason Hancock responded with the statutorily required corrections and suggestions:
- Forget the title “An Act to revise certain provisions regarding elections”—the A.G. gets to write the title.
- Use parentheses, not periods, to set off numbered subsections.
- Check wording: a couple of times, I either missed or added a word!
- Don’t try allowing us to refer emergency-clause measures in an initiated measure—gotta amend the constitution for that!
- As a bonus, LRC finds two more statutes that have to be amended to take into account my repeal of a couple of sections dealing my repeal of random sampling on nominating petitions and my repeal of the new near-Session four-month delay of LRC review of petitions (which I filed in August to avoid!). Thus, LRC actually expands my initiative from 20 sections to 22. I’ll be cutting….
But hey! With this one initiative, I’ve composed and offered for public comment more legislation than my opponent in the District 3 Senate race, Al Novstrup, has offered all summer. And unlike Al, I invite your public comment on this initiative. Tell me what you think… but tell me fast! If we want to be able to start circulating this petition in November, I need to write a final draft and submit it to Attorney General Marty Jackley soon, especially since there’s no guarantee he’d act with LRC’s alacrity and submit his necessary explanation before his sixty-day deadline.