Viewpoint: Attack on Voter Protection Act threatens our valuable initiative process

[Source: William C. Thornton, Special to the Arizona Daily Star, 3-8-2010] — Voters Beware!  Once again our right to legislate by initiative is under attack in the Arizona Legislature.  Inspired by the progressive movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, framers of the Arizona Constitution provided citizens with the initiative and recall as remedies for an unresponsive Legislature and direct means of removing corrupt or incompetent public officials from office.

It’s no secret that many legislators don’t like initiatives.  Many voter-approved measures provide evidence of a gap between an electorate with a progressive streak and the conservative legislative leadership.  Examples include the Arizona Heritage Fund, which passed by a 2-1 ratio in 1990.  With Heritage Funds, the citizens of Arizona have invested more than $400 million of lottery revenue in Arizona State Parks and Game and Fish, and earned many additional millions of dollars in matching grants.  If you hunt, fish, hike, camp, boat or picnic, you have benefited from the Heritage Fund at no cost to taxpayers.

By initiative we have also banned the barbaric blood sport of cockfighting, the hideously cruel use of leg-hold animal traps and mandated more humane conditions for factory-farmed hogs.  These measures all passed with overwhelming public support when the Legislature couldn’t or wouldn’t act.

Through the mid 1990s legislators engaged in a series of fund transfers and other actions designed to undermine the initiative process.  Matters came to a head when, in a particularly outrageous display of contempt for voters, legislators took it upon themselves to “fix” an initiative that legalized the limited use of medical marijuana.  The backlash produced the “Voter Protection Act” of 1998 that rendered voter-approved initiatives immune from legislative tampering.  [Note: To read the full opinion, click here.]

Arizona special election costs could exceed $11 million

Gov. Jan Brewer in her former role as Secretary of State, overseer of elections (Photo: Paul O'Neill, EV Tribune)

[Source: Jeremy Duda, Arizona Capitol Times] — Gov. Jan Brewer is asking the Legislature to put two items on the ballot for a special election that she believes would help close Arizona’s budget gap and revitalize the state’s economy.  But those proposals come with costs of their own.  The Secretary of State’s Office has drawn up three scenarios for special elections in which voters would decide whether to temporarily raise taxes and overhaul the Voter Protection Act of 1998.  The special election, if approved by the Legislature, could cost the state nearly $12 million… for a number of expenses, including the ballots, promotional literature, Election Day personnel, training, voter outreach, and early-ballot processing.

  • According to the Secretary of State’s Office, the first scenario, a regular November-style election, would be the most costly, with an $11.7 million price tag.  That option would require all polling places in the state to open on Election Day, with 120 days notice and a 33-day early-voting period.
  • The second option, modeled after presidential primaries, would cost about $8.3 million, with fewer polling places than the first scenario and a 15-day period for early voting.  That type of election would also require 120 days notice.
  • The final option, a mail-in ballot election, would have a 33-day early voting period, would require just 90 days notice, and would cost about $10.1 million.

Secretary of State Ken Bennett ordered his office to start examining the costs of a special election in February after media reports stated that Brewer would ask the Legislature to send a temporary tax increase proposal to the voters.  She made that request on March 4 in a speech before a joint session of the Legislature, asking lawmakers to either put the issue to a public vote or simply approve it themselves.  “I’m just trying to be prepared, knowing that that’s something they were at least thinking about,” Bennett said after the initial reports that Brewer would ask for a special election.

The governor also requested that the Legislature put another question to the voters, an overhaul of 1998’s Proposition 105, the Voter Protection Act.  Brewer said many of the funds that are protected by that proposition would be put to better use in bridging the $3 billion budget gap the state is expecting to face in fiscal year 2010.