Every election cycle, out-of-state special interest groups spend millions of dollars in Arizona to buy their initiatives onto our ballot. It often takes just a couple million dollars—pocket change to California billionaires—to pay a few hundred circulators to collect signatures. And they usually flood the streets with paid circulators in just Phoenix and Tucson, stripping all other Arizonans from having a voice in the process.
Not every state has a citizen initiative process. In fact, less than half (20) allow for citizen initiative amendments to state law. Arizona is even more unique because in 1998, the Arizona voters amended the constitution with the “Voter Protection Act,” preventing the legislature from amending any measure passed on the ballot unless they obtain a ¾ majority and the amendment “furthers the purpose” of the initiative. In effect, this means that anything passed on the ballot must go back to the ballot for future changes, much like a constitutional amendment.
Of those 20 states with a citizen initiative process, 11 have a signature distribution requirement. This means that in those states, the signatures cannot all be collected in just one city or major county, like they currently can here in Arizona. Instead, initiative proponents need to gain support from diverse regions of the state.
It’s time for Arizona to join them, and we can by adopting a Geographic Distribution requirement for signatures. Passed by the legislature in 2023 and appearing on the ballot this November as Prop 134, this requirement would ensure that any group proposing a statewide initiative (that will affect Arizonans in every corner of the state) must gather signatures in all 15 diverse counties in the state.
Right now, rural Arizonans are completely ignored in the process. It is easier to sit on college campuses and densely populated areas like downtown Phoenix to collect all the requisite signatures than to get the buy-in from the diverse interests of Arizonans in other parts of the state. These diverse interests have a right to a voice in determining whether an issue will appear on the ballot.
These statewide initiatives impact everyone. Allowing just the voters of Phoenix to decide what goes on the ballot, and then allowing the voters of just one big county to pass it with a bare majority, is unfair to the rest of Arizona’s voters. Not only that, once passed, it would take going to the ballot all over again if that measure has unintended consequences for rural Arizonans.
Prop 134 is a fair and balanced approach to increasing representation. Arizona is in the minority as a state with a citizen initiative process, an even smaller minority as a state without a geographic distribution requirement, and finally in a minority of one with the “Voter Protection Act” that essentially makes ballot measures permanent.
Requiring signatures to be collected from every district in Arizona will ensure proponents of initiatives speak to Arizonans across the state, increasing voter participation, and ensuring that any measure qualifying for the ballot in November has broad support from every part of the state, not just one demographic, in one area, with a limited scope of interests.
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