Laurie Roberts

opinion columnist

Having made it more expensive to put initiatives on the ballot, our leaders now proceed to Phase Two of Operation Silence Our Citizens.

Making it easier to knock initiatives off the ballot.

On Tuesday, the Senate Appropriations Committee will hear a last-minute proposal aimed at making it easier to get initiatives thrown out in the courts before voters get a chance to consider them.

The “strike-everything amendment” to House Bill 2244 comes courtesy of Sen. Debbie Lesko, R-Peoria, who evidently is horrified at the prospect of voters exercising their constitutional right to make laws via initiative.

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So much so that she wants to change the law, requiring initiative campaigns to strictly comply with rules governing the initiative process rather than the current “substantial compliance” standard used by the courts.

The reason for the change is obvious: to provide yet another opportunity for our leaders to circumvent our right to go around them and make laws via initiative. Our leaders, still steaming about voters raising the minimum wage, have proposed a series of changes designed to weaken our power to make laws.

And so, suddenly, comes HB 2244.

What's fair for one isn't for the other

The current “substantial compliance” standard means judges aren’t likely to throw out an initiative supported by 150,000 Arizona voters just because the margin on the petition are one-quarter inch at the top rather than the required one-half inch. Or just because 7.8-point type was used rather than 8 point.

“Substantial compliance is when a court looks at an error and asks whether a reasonable person would have been confused or misled by the error,” attorney Kory Langhofer, who specializes in election law, told me. “So when misspelling someone’s name for example or having the wrong size margin, those are not the sorts of thing that are likely to confuse the average voter and would probably not be a problem under a substantial compliance standard.

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“With strict compliance, some errors, even though they might not confuse the voter, could be enough to invalidate an initiative or referendum petition.”

It’s difficult to know how the courts would apply the higher standard. The Arizona Court of Appeals has said that strict compliance means “nearly perfect compliance.”

A standard, I note, that our leaders aren’t applying to themselves.

HB 2244 would apply only to initiative petitions. (And referendums, which already require the higher standard.)

Our leaders, in circulating their nominating petitions, would continue to hold themselves accountable to the lower standard.

Figures, doesn’t it?