ARIZONA AMPLIFIED: "Arizona is a Petri dish. We have all this outside money coming in,” | The Guardian

The citizens’ initiative process is enshrined in Arizona’s constitution, and previously led to the state implementing mandatory sick time and a higher minimum wage , legalizing both medical and recreational marijuana and banning indoor smoking.

Arizona is ‘one of the hardest states’ for ballot initiatives

But it’s become costly and legally complicated to run measures here in the past decade, as stricter laws pushed by a Republican legislature threaten to derail citizen-led campaigns. It now costs as much as $10m to collect signatures, not including the additional millions needed to withstand court challenges and front a successful campaign to win. . .

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Republicans in Arizona push measures to curtail citizen-led initiatives

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In November, voters in Arizona will decide whether to limit citizens’ ability to get measures on the ballot, a change that could severely curtail direct democracy.

Three upcoming measures, referred to the ballot by Republican state lawmakers, would require a supermajority to approve any taxes on the ballot, limit initiatives to one topic and allow lawmakers to alter ballot measures if any language is illegal or unconstitutional.

In total, the measures represent a final step in the Arizona legislature’s years-long attempt to hamper citizen initiatives, which allow voters to circumvent the legislature altogether by collecting signatures from their fellow residents on issues to send to the ballot. With Republicans in control of the legislature, progressive causes — like minimum wage increases in 2016 and marijuana legalization in 2020 — have used the initiative process to bypass lawmakers in recent years.

“We’ve seen, since minimum wage passed, a very deliberate effort to make direct democracy more difficult and more expensive. This is the knockout punch,” said Stacy Pearson, a spokesperson for Will of the People Arizona, a campaign against the three measures. “So we’re in the last round of the boxing match. And this would be the end.”

 . . . The new measures have support not only from Republican-elected officials, but heavy hitters like the Arizona chamber of commerce and industry and the state GOP.

They join a national trend of GOP-initiated attempts to curtail citizen-led ballot measures. In Arkansas, voters will weigh a measure to require a 60% majority for most ballot measures. And in South Dakota in June, voters rejected a 60% threshold for tax measures, which would have made it more difficult for voters to approve Medicaid expansion at the ballot this November.

 

“What we’re seeing is red states trying to curtail this tool that citizens have used really successfully to move policies that are otherwise stuck for, usually, political reasons,” said Hannah Ledford, deputy executive director and campaigns director for the Fairness Project...

The three proposals from Republican lawmakers would hinder citizen initiatives in different ways, each of which will affect whether groups will decide to run measures in the first place.

 

✓ Perhaps the most major change, and one similar to the measure that recently failed in South Dakota, is contained in Proposition 132, which would require 60% of voters in order to pass a ballot measure that “approves a tax”.

✓ Another referral, Proposition 129, calls for ballot measures to focus on a single subject, which must be reflected in the title of the measure.

Lawmakers must follow a single-subject rule. The state budget process, which frequently jammed tons of unrelated provisions into budget bills, was recently struck down by the Arizona supreme court for violating single-subject and title laws. The sponsor of the referral, Arizona Republican congressman John Kavanagh, said an initiative could still have many provisions, as long as they all relate directly to the subject and title of the measure.

✓ The third proposal, Proposition 128, relates to measures that contain “illegal or unconstitutional language”, as determined by the courts. If measures have such language, lawmakers can amend or repeal it – something they cannot do now, because the Voter Protection Act prevents lawmakers from tinkering with voter-approved laws unless they have a three-fourths majority and further the intent of the measure. 

[    ]  Those opposed to the three measures believe voters will see through the attempt to limit their own power and reject all three.

“They seem to have done a really good job in putting together progressives on the merits and libertarians on the government overreach, which – when you combine that – we have enough votes to defeat these,” Pearson said."