Oklahoma's House passed Tuesday legislation to require citizens' initiative petitions to collect signatures from all of Oklahoma's congressional districts in order to qualify for a statewide ballot.

The proposal, which passed on a near party-line vote, faced fierce opposition from legislative Democrats, who said it would take power away from voters and impede their ability to get petitions on the ballot.

House Joint Resolution 1027 by Rep. John Pfeiffer, R-Orlando, would require initiative petition campaigns to collect a certain percentage of signatures from each of the state's five congressional districts. A previous version of the legislation would have required initiative petition campaigns to collect significantly more signatures than currently required, but the measure was amended on the floor to change that part.

Under the amended proposal, signature gathering requirements would still be based off the number of people who voted in the last gubernatorial general election. But instead of having to collect nearly 178,000 signatures to qualify a constitutional amendment for the ballot, petition campaigns would have to collect 35,591 signatures from each congressional district.