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A good salesman can sell anything to anyone, even if what they’re selling would end up being detrimental in the long run. This is exactly what the Idaho Farm Bureau Federation has accomplished in the Gem State, according to Lewiston Tribune reporter William L. Spence.

The sale was completed when Governor Butch Otter’s signed Senate Bill 1108 into law on none-other-than April Fools Day.


By touting fears of urban-liberal agendas clogging citizen-initiated ballot measures, the Farm Bureau had been successful in selling the legislature a signature distribution requirement that will make Idaho’s petition process even more difficult than it already is.  In the last 77 years, only 35 initiatives have been put to a vote.

Legislation signed by Ohio Gov. John Kasich on March 22 has infuriated Democrats and advocacy groups who say it will make it harder for voters to repeal laws and introduce their own.

Senate Bill 47, sponsored by Sen. Bill Seitz of Cincinnati, sets strict rules on the time organizers have to collect signatures when mounting a petition drive to strike down laws. The bill, which passed swiftly through the legislature, will essentially cut at least two weeks from the existing timetable.

Read More at the Plain Dealer

Maryland’s House Bill 493 is not dead yet asserts Election Law Subcommittee Chairman Jon Cardin (D-Baltimore County), a co-sponsor.  However, the bill is currently mired in his subcommittee with Cardin conceding that the bill needs amendments for “stakeholders” to consider its passage, and that the chances of it moving forward in the 13 days left in the legislative session have “decreased.”

The chairman of the election law subcommittee handling controversial changes to the referendum and petition process said Tuesday that the bill isn’t dead, despite the fact that it awaits action by the subcommittee and would need numerous amendments to make it palatable to stakeholders.

But with just 13 days left in the 90-day session, Election Law Subcommittee Chairman Jon Cardin, D-Baltimore County, conceded, “The chances of it moving have decreased.”

“No action has been taken,” Cardin said in a phone interview. “We’ve been trying to work with all of the different stakeholders to come up with something that we could all work with.”

Idaho legislators, in a bid to backpedal from the thorny problems caused by passage of Senate Bill 1108, with its negative impact on the initiative and referendum petition process, have fast-tracked a new bill, Senate Bill 1191, to correct some of the vague and likely unconstitutional provisions legislators just enacted via passage of SB 1108. 

SB 1191 removes the requirement that each petition form contain only signatures from a single legislative district, opting to restore the past system whereby signatures are organized on separate sheets by county. This would eliminate extraneous paperwork and potential for errors that could lead to signatures being thrown out.

Gov. John Kasich signed legislation Friday that would make it harder for Ohio voters to repeal laws. Now the clock is ticking for opponents who could void the controversial bill.

A provision in Senate Bill 47 would set new limits on the number of days organizers have to mount petition drives and collect enough signatures to put a referendum on the ballot. Kasich’s autograph on SB 47 began a 90-day countdown for groups to stage a petition drive to shut down the legislation.

Read more from The Plain Dealer

The state Senate will vote on SB 821 today: if passed into law, this bill would create a cumbersome and expensive new government program for registration, training, and tracking citizens who are paid to circulate petitions to place initiatives and referendums on the ballot. SB 821, sponsored by state Senator Keith Ingram, would place extremely heavy burdens on Arkansas’s initiative and referendum process – indeed, the bill almost seems designed to make it difficult or impossible for citizens to run successful ballot campaigns.

You can read “How SB 821 Endangers the First Amendment,” AAI’s newest paper, here.

SB 821 threatens petition process

Arkansas State Senators will vote today on Senate Bill 821, sponsored by Sen. Keith Ingram of West Memphis, which would place extremely heavy new burdens on Arkansas’s initiative and referendum process.

Also today, the Advance Arkansas Institute has released a paper by Citizens in Charge President Paul Jacob, which outlines the roadblocks SB 821 places on the I&R process in the Natural State, including the creation of an extensive state registration, training and tracking program for paid petition circulators and making it a crime to “relate” pay to productivity.

Jacob noted that “the bill almost seems designed to make it difficult or impossible for citizens to run successful ballot campaigns.”

Laws in 2012 prompted Maryland’s first statewide ballot referendum in 20 years, allowing marriage equality, the Dream Act and congressional redistricting to be upheld by voters.

And if those who don’t agree with Maryland’s likely ban of the death penalty try to get voters to reverse it, a new bill could create obstacles for them and other citizens looking to petition state laws to ballot, lawmakers say. Legislation by Delegate Eric Luedtke, D-Montgomery, would demand several things from those circulating petitions to force a ballot issue.

It would require the sponsor to form a ballot issue committee, which is a campaign finance entity, for each law that is challenged.

In a hyper-partisan effort (with only one exception), Ohio’s Republican legislators have passed Senate Bill 47 through both the House and Senate, sending the legislation to make the state’s petition process much more difficult to the desk of Republican Governor John Kasich for his signature, which would make it law.

“The right to referendum is a very important check that people have to push back on abuses of this legislature,” Rep. Kathleen Clyde (D-Kent) argued on the floor. “This bill is a direct attack on that sacred right. To call this bill a solution in search of a problem is being charitable.”

Ohio House Republicans passed a controversial bill Wednesday that would make it harder for citizens to mount petition drives to repeal laws and introduce their own.

Hours later, the Senate signed off on the House version of the bill, sending it to Gov. John Kasich for approval.

Senate Bill 47, which initially passed the Senate March 6, has moved swiftly through the GOP-controlled legislature, vexing Democrats and advocacy groups who say a provision in the bill would jeopardize voters’ longstanding right to initiative and referendum.

Testimony so far this morning on SB 1108, the Senate-passed bill to make it tougher to qualify an initiative or referendum measure for the Idaho ballot, has been almost all against the bill. Anne Nesse of Coeur d’Alene brought a petition against the bill that she said has 580 signatures collected online from all over the state, both from rural and urban areas, and is getting 100 more signatures a day. “I have met personally with Kootenai County Republicans, who were appalled, frankly,” she said. “They were practically hugging me when I left, and I’m a Democrat.” She told the committee, “I would guess that you should check with your constituency on this.”

Testimony so far this morning on SB 1108, the Senate-passed bill to make it tougher to qualify an initiative or referendum measure for the Idaho ballot, has been almost all against the bill. Anne Nesse of Coeur d’Alene brought a petition against the bill that she said has 580 signatures collected online from all over the state, both from rural and urban areas, and is getting 100 more signatures a day. “I have met personally with Kootenai County Republicans, who were appalled, frankly,” she said. “They were practically hugging me when I left, and I’m a Democrat.” She told the committee, “I would guess that you should check with your constituency on this.”

After facing referendums that froze two property taxes last year, the Summit County Council is keeping a close eye on a bill that revises the referendum law.

First substitute S.B. 66, Referendum Revisions, sponsored by Sen. Stuart Reid, has moved through the Utah Senate and House Government Operations Committee and is now before the Utah House of Representatives.

To gain favor in the Senate, Reid reverted to the current signature requirements needed for a referendum.

“One of the issues with this legislation was the percentage of those who had to be involved in a referendum from the latest presidential election,” Reid said. “That seemed to be the major concern of some of the body. This substitution reverts back to the original percentages in code today.”

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Recently, the Arizona legislature proposed several bills that would impose complications on the process of petitioning the state to refer or initiate laws. On February 19, Citizens in Charge’s Director of Field Operations, Scott Tillman, went before the Arizona Senate’s Elections committee to give testimony in opposition to two bills in particular that would restrict the process the Citizens in Charge works diligently to protect.