Ducey, GOP again fight initiatives by citizens

They want your money. They want your votes. Then they want you to just ... shut ... up.

The Republicans who control the Legislature and the governor who controls those Republicans are coming after you ... again.

They did all they could last year to make it as difficult as possible on average citizens to get an initiative on the ballot, passing all kinds of rules that they themselves do not have to follow. Remember that?

They banned the practice of paying initiative circulators for each signature they collect. They passed another law changing the previous requirement that petitions be in “substantial compliance” with election laws to one that now requires “strict compliance,” making citizen initiatives easier to challenge.

It goes on.

Ducey tried to justify the initiative-killing effort by saying, “This commonsense legislation preserves the integrity of the (initiative) process by ensuring that those seeking to make lasting changes to our laws comply with current laws.”

If that were true, why don’t lawmakers have to follow the same rules? Because they don’t. Because they did not include themselves in the legislation.

Lawmakers — and the governor — don’t have to follow this so-called “commonsense” legislation. Hmmmm.

This session, the first initiative-killing proposal comes from Republican state Sen. John Kavanagh. It’s called SCR 1001, and it would require that initiatives abide by what is called the “single-subject rule.” This is another way to limit what an initiative could do and would further complicate the initiative process. The bill was to be heard in the Senate Judiciary Committee this week but was held.

With any luck, with any common sense, it will die there.

The attacks by the Legislature on direct democracy by average citizens have gone on for too long as it is. And the process has been eroded too much as it is.

But that is just what Ducey and his legislative goons have been hoping to achieve for several years. It’s what they want. Along with a few other things.

They want your money.

They want your votes.

Then they want you to just ... shut ...

up.

They don’t want you collecting signatures to put something on the ballot that you then could vote on. And that might become law. They want only their ideas,

their laws, and they want only to consider issues pushed by their party and the campaign contributors to whom they are indebted. I confess I don’t understand the logic. I mean, if Republicans who control the Legislature believe Arizona citizens have the wisdom and the intelligence to elect them, why would they not trust those same citizens to responsibly carry out their initiative rights under the Arizona Constitution?

Unless, of course, the politicians believe that anyone willing to put them in office can’t be trusted. Hmmmmm.