Ark. GOP creates hurdles for citizen ballot initiatives
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Arkansas voters have been active in recent years, passing ballot initiatives that legalized medical marijuana, raised the minimum wage and expanded casino gambling.
That hasn’t gone over well with Republicans.
Arkansas’ GOP-dominated Legislature has taken steps this year that will make it harder to put such proposals before voters, and they are not the only ones.
Florida, North Dakota, South Dakota and Utah also have enacted restrictions on the public’s ability to place initiatives on the ballot. In Michigan, the state’s top election official is being sued over Republican-enacted requirements that make it harder to qualify proposals for the ballot.
In all, lawmakers in 16 states introduced more than 120 bills this year that would weaken the initiative process, according to the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center. The moves worry advocates who say they undermine the idea of direct democracy and could effectively shut down the initiative process in some states.
“This is a way to make sure that there is absolutely no way that anyone can do something that (Republican lawmakers) don’t already approve,” said Florida state Sen. Oscar Braynon, a Democrat who opposed state restrictions recently signed into law.
In Arkansas, the changes came after voters legalized medical marijuana in 2016 and last year approved raising the state’s minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2021.
The state’s governor signed into law legislation overhauling the way measures are approved for the ballot so that a proposed initiative and the signatures collected in favor of it are reviewed at the same time. The change, critics say, would mean groups could waste time and money circulating petitions only to find out afterward that there was a problem with the wording that would disqualify it from the ballot.
Arkansas lawmakers also placed on next year’s ballot a measure that, if approved by voters, would impose additional restrictions. Those would include tripling the number of counties where initiative sponsors must collect a minimum number of signatures and eliminating a 30-day period groups have to gather additional signatures if they initially fall short. The lawmakers’ ballot measure also would move up by several months the deadline for submitting petitions.
“Everything they have done has … the ultimate goal to eliminate the petitioning process so that the people have no voice, and it is outrageous,” said Melissa Fults, executive director of the Drug Policy Education Group, which plans to try and get a recreational marijuana proposal on next year’s ballot.
Lawmakers pushing the restrictions said they are trying to rein in an initiative process that has been an easy target for out-of-state groups. Previous initiatives included unsuccessful attempts by pro-casino groups to give certain companies a gambling monopoly in the state.
Republican state Sen. Mat Pitsch, who co-sponsored the changes in Arkansas, said the state’s constitution has been changed 20 times over the past seven elections — a number that also includes measures lawmakers themselves put before voters.
“When you change your constitution three times every other year, that’s more like legislating than having a constitution,” said Pitsch.
Not all changes are winning favor in Republican states. Idaho Gov. Brad Little vetoed proposals that would have made it tougher to qualify a measure for the ballot, saying he didn’t believe the restrictions would stand up in court. The legislation was seen primarily as a reaction by the Republican-dominated Legislature to last year’s voter approval of Medicaid expansion.