Initiatives to the People

Summary

"Initiatives to the People" are critical to government in that they allow citizens to directly pass laws that the Legislature does not have the courage or desire to implement.  There have been less than 1000 initiatives submitted to the Secretary of State since 1914 - a relatively small number.  Initiatives take extraordinary amounts of time and money to develop.  In fact, it requires the signatures of eight percent of voters who voted in the last gubernatorial election to validate any initiative.  That means any initiative appearing on the ballot in 2008 will need approximately 200,000 valid signatures.  I believe that number is too high.

Proposal

Reduce the number to four percent (just like a referendum).  In the current environment, 100,000 signatures should be adequate to assess the desire of the voters.  We should also bar the Legislature from unilaterally making any laws that affect any part of the initiative process, such as whether or not signature gatherers can be paid.  The State belongs to the people, and we should have as many options as we wish. And we should change Article II, Section 1 of the  Constitution to mandate that only the voters - not the legislature - can overturn/recall the conditions of an initiative.

Additionally, we have seen several debacles that have occurred due to a judge deeming an initiative to be unconstitutional after an election. To solve this, a special initiative-review judicial panel would have to rule on its constitutionality before the initiative goes on the ballot.  And that ruling could not be constitutionally challenged after the election.