Az House bill could make it harder to get recalls, referendums on ballots

Today, HB 2407, referendum and recall provisions, will be considered by the Arizona State House Committee on Elections. The bill is expected to make the acceptance of petitions for initiatives, referendums and recalls even more difficult to achieve than it is now. However, this conflicts with the Arizona constitution which reserved the powers of referendum and initiative from the legislature, thus requiring that the legislature may only pass laws that help the people to exercise their retained power.

As a result, the public is encouraged to call members of the Committee and request that they vote “no” on the bill.

HB 2407, according to the House overview, “modifies requirements for initiative, referendum and recall and requires courts to strictly construe, and the petition proponents to strictly comply with these provisions.”

As the residents of Oro Valley learned just this year, the current laws are ambiguous and confusing. In the case of towns like Oro Valley, some officials appear to rely on the confusion to block the efforts of the public to bring important matters to the voters. Just last month, the Oro Valley town Clerk relied on a small clerical error to reject referendum petitions containing over 3000 signatures from residents.

While the bill eliminates some of the more unnecessary provisions and cleans up certain issues such as the unneeded use of middle names and/or middle initials, it calls for the “strict compliance with the constitutional and statutory requirements for the referendum process…”, including a clerical requirement for grouping of petitions by circulator that was repealed in 2014.

In the case of Oro Valley, residents failed to place a small number, generated by the Town Clerk for bookkeeping purposes to the bottom of each petition. The Clerk refused to provide guidance to residents that would have prevented the error.

Currently, the State statutes in some instances clarifies local petitions (County/Municipal) requirements in an inconsistent manner.

Members of the Elections Committee:

Heather Carter: hcarter@azleg.gov,

Ken Clark: kenclark@azleg.gov

J. Larkin: jlarkin@azleg.gov

JD Mesnard: mesnard@azleg.gov

Michelle Ugenti: mugenti@azleg.gov

Jeff Weninger: jweninger@azleg.gov

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