Will state tighten direct democracy?
Restrictive measure in Colorado could serve as a model or a cautionary tale for initiative process in Arizona
Arizonans look to Colorado as a bellwether on the legalization of marijuana and its effects. That state could illuminate for us, too, on the promise and perils of tinkering with the citizen-led initiative process. An effort there known as Amendment 71 won passage in November. The measure makes it a lot more difficult to qualify for the ballot and approve initiatives that would amend Colorado’s state Constitution.
A coalition of business and political leaders pitched Amendment 71 as a way to tighten a lax initiative process that made it far too easy to put measures on the ballot, and far too inviting for out-of-state interests to use Colorado as a testing ground on largely progressive ideas.
Sound familiar?
More signatures, wider margins
Amendment 71 requires that any citizen-led constitutional amendment garner the signatures of 2 percent of registered voters in each of Colorado’s 35 state Senate districts to qualify for the ballot.
It also requires the measure to secure 55 percent or more of the vote to pass. Both requirements are tall orders. And both have been explored, and likely will be again, by the GOP-led Arizona Legislature.
House Concurrent Resolution 2029 from this year’s Arizona legislative session sought a public vote to require all citizen initiatives to have signatures of a fixed percentage of qualified voters from each of the 30 legislative districts — 10 percent for statewide measures; 15 percent for constitutional-amendment measures.
HCR 2029 passed the House before stalling in Senate committee.
Not so fast: There’s a lawsuit
In Colorado, Amendment 71 is far from settled. A lawsuit filed in April contends that the by-district signature requirement violates the “oneman one-vote” principle given that Colorado’s registered-voter population vary greatly by district.
That is, signatures do not carry the same weight. Those from smaller districts have a disproportionately bigger say, the argument goes. Looked at it another way, one district could torpedo efforts to put a statewide measure on the ballot.
In Arizona, the population in the state’s 30 legislative districts, too, vary by tens of thousands, whether it’s by voting registration (Colorado’s standard) or by voting eligibility (Arizona’s).
The second component of Amendment 71 — a bigger winning margin, known as a supermajority — isn’t unheard of. A handful of states, including several in the West, require initiatives that