“[C]urrently, in the state of Arkansas, out-of-state special interest groups that come to our state can try to change our laws and change our constitution,” Rep. Kendon Underwood, the Republican sponsor of House Bill 1419, testified “by just getting signatures from 15 counties.”
In the over 100-year history of citizen-initiated ballot measures in Arkansas, no initiative has ever qualified with signatures from only 15 counties. Zero. Moreover, to pass a statutory or constitutional initiative requires much more than merely gathering petition signatures; it mandates a majority vote of the people of Arkansas.
As for “out-of-state” special interests, the ballot issues referred by legislators last election received more such funding than the lone citizen-initiated measure.
There’s more to unpack.
“Changing” the state constitution is too easy? Well, HB-1419 hikes up the constitutional requirement that citizen petitions qualify in “at least 15 counties” to now 50 counties out of Arkansas’s 75 counties — a more than 300 percent increase.
You read that correctly. Mr. Underwood’s proposes to amend the constitution with a simple statute. Textbook unconstitutionality. Yet, that statute has now passed both houses of the legislature and Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders says she will sign it.
In both 2020 and 2022, legislators placed constitutional amendments on the ballot to entice Arkansans to vote away their initiative and referendum power. Both times Natural State voters said no. One of the provisions defeated in 2020 would have increased the number of counties in which petitions must reach a threshold to 45.
After voters rebuffed legislators on those amendments, the politicians now decide to weasel their way around the constitutional restraint.
My, they’re real politicians now!
Legislators also declared “an emergency” so HB-1419 will immediately go into effect, because there’s an urgent need “to enhance and protect Arkansans’ voice in the ballot initiative and referendum process.”
Why not tell the Big Lie? They’ve told every other size.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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7 replies on “Politicians Revolt Against Voters”
Rather than generally prohibitting laws that raise hurdles without good cause, Section 1 of Article 5, to which State Senator Tucker referred, precisely states “No law shall be passed to prohibit any person or persons from giving or receiving compensation for circulating petitions, nor to prohibit the circulation of petitions, nor in any manner interfering with the freedom of the people in procuring petitions”.
So redress cannot be found in the courts of law, but only either by replacing the rascals with legislators who will repeal this law, or by jumping this hurdle to pass a measure then to remove the hurdle.
Voters will be reluctant to vote the issue in electing legislators, because each candidate bundles positions, almost each of which issues is important to many voters. Moreover, just as candidates often prove faithless on the issue of self-limiting their times in office, if only a slim majority are elected on a promise of repealing this law, some from that majority will defect.
That leaves the possibility of a referendum-on-referenda. And such a measure is more likely to pass if it not only repeals this law, but amends Article 5 to indeed prohibit unwarranted hindrances to future referenda.
It’s possible that Rep. Kendon Underwood and you could both be wrong. Underwood, because most politicians these days are always wrong, and you because you might have too much faith in a hugely dumbed-down, naive and gullible electorate. In creating petition proposals and in the very signing of them out in front of the library.
They are your people—Republikooks!
What did you expect from them?
Fairness? Get serious!
Pam, as was noted at the precious occasion on which you tried to pull that card out of your sleeve and to slip it into your deck, “Paul was literally sent to prison by a Republican Administration, and has repeatedly attacked Republican misdeeds in this ‘blog.”
I apologize for the precious typographic error. I intended to write “previous”.
And yet he loves Trump! And the Kooks.
No, Pam. Paul’s opposition to the lies of the corporatist left are not expressions of love for Trump.