On March 5, the Arizona House passed HCR 2057. It requires initiatives to get signatures of 10% of the registered voters in each of the state’s fifteen counties. Currently the law has no distribution requirement. Here is the text.
The Ninth Circuit already ruled that statewide initiative cannot have county distribution requirements, in an Idaho case. Arizona is also in the Ninth Circuit. The Idaho case was Idaho Coalition United for Bears v Cenarrusa, 342 F.3d 1073.
Makes sense.
one more anti-democracy machination by anti-democracy minority rule gerrymander oligarchs to stop reforms
Elected officials wanting to make it more difficult for voters to take matters into their own hands. It will be much more expensive to deploy signature-gatherers to remote corners of the state where there are few voters and few places where they congregate in order to obtain signatures.
I’m with Joe on this.