Sorry, Arizona: Your rights just took a big hit

It’s been a bad news/good news sort of week for Arizona’s power set. Gov. Doug Ducey, the Republican-run Legislature and their handlers over at the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry started Tuesday watching as a group of citizens delivered an astounding 111,540 signatures to put the state’s voucher-expansion law on hold.

But the day ended sweetly for them as a Maricopa County Superior Court judge allowed another new law to take effect — one making it more difficult for you to exercise your constitutional right to make laws at the ballot box.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sherry Stephens ruled that nobody’s constitutional rights had been trampled because House Bill 2244 hadn’t yet taken effect. Thus, she allowed the law to take effect.

“Plaintiffs believe HB 2244 will affect their future initiative efforts but this Court finds that expectation is not sufficient to make this matter ripe for judicial review,” she wrote.

Never mind the parade of politically active Arizonans who testified that the new law will make it far more difficult for voters to use their constitutionally given power to make laws via initiative.

Consider yourself punished, Arizona, for raising the minimum wage.

HB 2244 was one of several new laws approved by our leaders this year, making it vastly more expensive to mount an initiative and vastly easier to get an initiative tossed off the ballot. The laws were sought by the chamber, whose members are fuming over the fact that 58 percent of voters raised the state’s minimum wage last November.

Rather than mounting a serious campaign last year to explain to voters why it was a bad idea, the chamber decided instead to get Ducey and company to curtail our rights to make laws without their say-so in the future.

HB 2244 now requires that initiative campaigns adhere to “strict compliance” with the law, as opposed to the current legal standard, “substantial compliance.”

That means, for example, that a petition with margins that are a quarterinch off could result in an initiative petition signed by hundreds of thousands of Arizona voters being thrown out.

Ducey says it’s all about “restoring integrity” to the system, that powerful out-of-state interests have hijacked the process to enact laws the citizen-elected Legislature never would.

Left unexplained: how the hijack happens when hundreds of thousands of Arizona voters must sign petitions to put an initiative on the ballot, and a million or more must agree on Election Day. Also left unexplained: why our leaders don’t worry about the powerful out-of-state interests who anonymously bankroll “dark money” campaigns to get them elected.

That’s because these new laws aren’t about restoring integrity. They’re about restoring control. Theirs.

Watch now as they pull out the stops to ensure their voucher-expansion law — the one that 111,540 people signed petitions to put on hold — never is put to a public vote. Your leaders, hard at work for … Well, not you.