Prop. 134 would make citizen initiatives tougher

Republican lawmakers want to see two ballot measures approved that would make it harder for voters to enact new ballot measures.

The big picture: Proposition 134 would amend the Arizona Constitution to make citizen initiatives and referendums collect a minimum amount of signatures from each of the state's 30 legislative districts to qualify for the ballot.

• Currently, ballot measure campaigns can collect their signatures from voters anywhere in the state.
• Proposition 136 would allow people to challenge the constitutionality of citizen initiatives in court before they're actually passed.

Why it matters: Citizen initiatives are a way to pass laws that have majority support from Arizona voters, even if they're opposed by a majority of lawmakers.

• Often that means liberal policies that lack support in the Republican-controlled Legislature.

Context: Republican lawmakers have spent years adding restrictions and requirements to the citizen initiative process, including:

• Imposing a legal review standard known as "strict compliance," which allows courts to disqualify initiatives from the ballot over relatively minor technical defects.
• Barring initiative campaigns from paying petition circulators on a per-signature basis.
• Requiring judges to disqualify signatures if the petitioner who collected them doesn't appear in court if subpoenaed during a legal challenge to the proposal. Many petitioners travel from state to state while working on different campaigns and can't always easily return to Arizona.

What they're saying: By making it more difficult to collect signatures for citizen initiatives, Prop. 134 would make them more expensive, Drew Chavez, owner of the signature-gathering firm Petition Partners, told Axios.

• Ultimately, it will result in fewer citizen initiatives getting on the ballot "and that's the point," he said.
• Will Humble, executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association, described Prop. 134 as "sabotage" in the secretary of state's election publicity pamphlet, noting it would've made it more difficult to pass measures that lawmakers opposed, like minimum wage increases or the state's public smoking ban.

The other side: Supporters say Prop. 134 will give rural Arizonans more voice and prevent initiative campaigns from focusing signature-gathering efforts in the heavily populated Phoenix and Tucson areas while ignoring the rest of the state.

• Sen. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, who sponsored the measure that referred Prop. 134 to the ballot, noted during the legislative debate that 13 states had geographic diversity requirements to put propositions on the ballot.
• The proposal would require initiative campaigns "to engage with communities across the state to secure widespread support for a measure before it goes to voters," Danny Seiden, president and CEO of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce, said in the publicity pamphlet.

By the numbers: The campaign that successfully referred an abortion rights measure to the ballot this year reported spending about $10 million on signature gathering.

• Make Elections Fair PAC, which sought to put a measure on the ballot to create nonpartisan primary elections in Arizona, spent more than $6.5 million on signatures.
• A judge has ruled that the measure collected enough signatures, but opponents are appealing that decision.