SCR 1015 Would Ensure That Our State’s Initiative Process Is for All Arizonans

For years, Arizona has been a target of out-of-state special interest groups that want to put their radical ideas in our state. The process usually goes something like this.

1. Liberal groups from outside Arizona take an issue that is unpopular with the electorate, like tax hikes.
2. They come in and hire an army of paid circulators to flood the streets of Phoenix and Tucson to collect their signatures—hardly bothering with the rest of the state.
3. Bad policy and sweeping reforms are placed on our ballots with only a small fraction of the state’s support.

One of the most recent examples of this was Prop 208, which narrowly passed in 2020. Out-of-state teachers’ unions spent more than $30 million over four years in their effort to buy the largest tax hike in history—lying to Arizona voters to get signatures and lying to get the slimmest of majorities to approve it. Had it not been for the court system killing Prop 208 once and for all, Arizona would be a high tax state today.

Now, a proposed constitutional amendment sponsored by Arizona Senator J.D. Mesnard would put a stop to this abuse. SCR 1015 would require that any initiative looking to qualify for the ballot is required to collect signatures from all 30 legislative districts in the state. This means that anyone who thinks they have a good idea that should be on the ballot won’t be able to rely solely on signatures from large cities like Phoenix and Tucson. They will also need to talk to voters in Buckeye, Kingman, Yuma, Wilcox, and more.

This is a commonsense reform that would require a percentage of registered voters from each legislative district to express their support of a ballot initiative before it could appear on a ballot.

• • Signatures from 10 percent of the qualified electors from each legislative district would be needed to propose any statewide measure.
  • Signatures from 15 percent of the qualified electors from each legislative district would be needed to propose any constitutional amendment.
  • Signatures from 5 percent of the qualified electors in each legislative district would be needed to propose a statewide referendum.

Most other states that have an initiative process also have a geographic signature distribution requirement just like this one. And it’s time that Arizona has one as well to make sure that our initiative process is for all Arizonans—not out-of-state special interests.

SCR 1015 will be on the ballot in November 2024, and as you might expect Democrats like Rep. Athena Salman are already busy gaslighting the people of Arizona (while fully mased, of course). And just like with Prop 132 last year, out-of-state unions and liberals will look to spend big to defeat the measure. But Prop 132 passed, which means that a 60 percent majority vote of the people is now required on any ballot measure that seeks to raise your taxes. Let’s ensure that SCR 1015 meets the same fate so that a more representative group of Arizona voters has a say in what appears on the ballot.

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