PHOENIX — A House panel approved legislation Wednesday that could give foes of voter-proposed initiatives a new legal tool to keep them from ever getting to the ballot.
Senate Bill 1094 would spell out that petition circulators have to read, out loud, the 300-word description that accompanies all initiatives.
Alternately, they could allow would-be signers the time to read it to themselves. But there is nothing in the proposal to say how long that should be.
Sen. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, who crafted the measure, said it’s designed to ensure people are informed about what they are being asked to sign.
“This is to make sure that what is communicated to the folks who are asking to sign petitions is accurate,” he told members of the Government and Elections Committee. And by “accurate,” Mesnard said that means the official, legally required summary “as opposed to whatever version the circulator can otherwise state to convince somebody, and then they’d be totally wrong or lying or distorting or whatever.”
What makes that important, he said, is that whatever is approved at the ballot cannot be altered by the legislature.
“Obviously, it is high stakes,” Mesnard said.
But Rep. Sarah Liguori, D-Phoenix, said she sees this as just another bid by the Republican-controlled legislature to erect new hurdles in the path of residents proposing their own laws. Among those are as new registration requirements for paid circulators, restrictions on how they are paid, and disqualifying any signatures a circulator collected if that person does not respond to a subpoena by someone challenging the measure.
This year alone GOP lawmakers already have proposed two other measures, one to require initiative circulators to get signatures in each of the state’s 30 legislative districts and then to say that an initiative cannot become law unless 60% of people vote for it.
Rep. Diego Sierra, D-Avondale, chided Republicans for trying to make the process more difficult.
He pointed out the Arizona Constitution specifically gives citizens the right to craft their own laws “independently of the legislature.”
“This is our citizens’ ability to be the counteracting force to the bad laws that we are passing here,” Sierra said.
“This should be the golden age of citizen activism,” he said. “But here we are, wallowing in pettiness and spite.”
But Rep. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek, said initiative circulators don’t always tell the truth.
He said he was approached just last week by someone asking him to sign a proposal that would outlaw “dark money” in campaigns and require that the true source of all funds be disclosed. Hoffman said when he asked the circulator who was behind the petition drive, the person responded “the Citizens Clean Elections Commission.”
That is not true.
The actual name of the group is “Voters’ Right to Know.” And the commission is, in fact, a government agency that cannot get involved in politics.
And Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, said he has personally heard petition circulators “outright lying about what the petition is about.”
But the central question remains how such a law, if approved, would affect not only the ability to get the signatures but how it could be used in legal challenges to keep measures from going to voters.
Sen. Kelli Butler, D-Paradise Valley, said the legislation essentially presumes that people who are approached to sign petitions — or seek out petition circulators — are unaware of the issue. She said it forces those who are aware to go through this process of having someone take the time to read the summary to them or have to read it themselves.
Judith Simons, who told lawmakers she has circulated petitions, said that does happen, where people say that they are ready to sign. And sometimes, she said, it’s just a belief that, regardless of the issue, some people just like the idea of putting issues on the ballot for voters to get the last word.
“And that’s the point: Signing a petition is just to get the proposition on the ballot,” Simons said. And once it qualifies, she noted, there are several months before the election “when voters get a chance to learn more about it and decide how they want to vote.”
Butler worried about how this new requirement could open the door to legal challenges. She envisioned a situation where “people can tell on someone,” say they saw someone sign a petition who did not take the time to read it, and that then being used by initiative foes to try to have those signatures disqualified.
Hoffman had a different take.
“What this bill does is transparency,” he said.
“We want an informed citizenry,” Hoffman said. “We want people who are signing petitions to be informed about what they’re signing.”
He also said there is an “incentive” for paid circulators to get people to sign.
That incentive, however, is not what it once was.
Lawmakers several years ago voted to ban the practice of paying circulators based on the number of signatures they gather. But it does preserve the ability to pay circulators on an hourly basis.
The 7-6 party-line vote by the Republican controlled committee sends the measure to the full House. It already cleared the Senate with only Republicans in support.
By 
