LANSING — After making tweaks to appease some groups opposed to changes in how petition signatures are gathered for ballot proposals, the House of Representatives passed the bill shortly after 11 p.m. Wednesday.

The 60-49, mostly party-line vote with Republicans supporting and Democrats opposed, will make it tougher to get the signatures needed to get a proposal on the statewide ballot.

The bill would require that no more than 15 percent of the signatures gathered be from any one of the 14 congressional districts in the state. Current law has no geographic requirements on where signatures come from and the original version of the bill contained a 10 percent per-congressional-district signature threshold.

State Rep. James Lower, R-Cedar Lake, said the threshold is necessary to ensure that people from all across the state are included in the petitions for ballot proposals.

“This plan adds much needed transparency and accountability and ensures statewide input into these ballot proposals,” he said, noting he lives in a rural area of the state that often doesn’t get visited by petition circulators.

But the provision was one of the most egregious issues brought up by opponents of the legislation, who said it is blatantly unconstitutional, because thousands of signatures will get thrown out after a congressional district, especially in highly populated areas, reach the 15 percent threshold.

“Every person in a democracy counts,” said Rep. Yousef Rabhi, D-Ann Arbor. “What this bill does, is say ‘Sorry people of the state of Michigan, you don’t matter.' Because when you collect one more signature above the 15 percent threshold, that person’s vote is silenced.”

And Rep. Martin Howrylak, R-Troy, said he was saddened that his party was pushing the legislation.

“This bill creates hurdles, and the intent is to make it as hard as possible to get questions on the ballot,” he said.

Other provisions of the bill require that petition circulators clearly identify if they are being paid or are volunteers, and sets a seven day deadline for people who want to file an appeal of a Board of Canvassers decision to the state Supreme Court.

Business groups supported the legislation saying they had supported reform to ballot proposal legislation for some time.

But groups as varied as the ACLU and Right to Life of Michigan opposed the bills, saying it would chill their efforts to get volunteers to gather signatures. Right to Life shifted to neutral on the legislation after it was amended to increase the percentage of signatures that could be gathered from a single congressional district.

One provision in the original version of the bill would require petition circulators to file an affidavit with the Secretary of State and if they lied on the affidavit, all the signatures they gathered would be thrown out. Genevieve Marnon, a spokeswoman for Right to Life, said that would deter the group’s volunteers from participating in any future petition drives.

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“Last time we did a petition drive, we had 10,000 individual circulators. Can you imagine all of them registering with the Secretary of State?” she said. “It becomes an administrative nightmare. And I don’t think they want their names on a searchable data base.”

The lame duck bill, which was first introduced on Dec. 6, comes on the heels of three successful ballot proposals that were overwhelmingly approved by voters on the Nov. 6 ballot, but were opposed by many Republicans, including: legalizing marijuana for adult recreational use; changing the way federal and state legislative district lines are drawn and increasing access to voting.

It also was introduced after Republicans voted to gut a minimum wage hike to $12 per hour by 2022 and require employers to provide paid sick time to employees. Those proposals came about after activists gathered enough signatures to get them on the ballot, but the Legislature voted to adopt them in September in order to keep them off the ballot. One of the first actions taken by Republicans in the lame duck session was to significantly change the proposals. Those bills are awaiting a signature from Gov. Rick Snyder.

The latest bill – HB 6595 – now moves to the Senate for consideration.

Contact Kathleen Gray: 313-223-4430, kgray99@freepress.com or on Twitter @michpoligal.