On April 30, supporters of an Illinois legislative term limits initiative delivered 591,092 signatures to the office of the State Board of Elections. See this story. Supporters collected almost twice as many signatures as the legal requirement.
An earlier initiative for legislative term limits was removed from the ballot by the Illinois Supreme Court, because the State Constitution limits the subject matter of initiatives to only certain narrow subjects. The new initiative takes that decision into account, and includes other provisions that are clearly within the constitutional mandate, such as changing the constitution’s rules on how many votes are needed in the legislature to overcome a gubernatorial veto. Thanks to Paul Jacob for the link.
Term limits ONLY increase the power of Guvs and bureaucrats (think Stalin and Hitler)
— regardless of the political history MORONS doing term limit petitions.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
The Illinois constitution limits initiatives to amendments to Article IV, which prescribes the structure and procedures of the legislature.
The Illinois Supreme Court has interpreted the initiative provisions to require proposed changes to both structure and procedure.
That is, the concern is whether a proposed amendment is too narrow, rather than too broad.
The proposed amendment would reduce the number of senators and increase the number of representatives, and increase the district nesting ration from 1:2 to 1:3. That is clearly structural.
It would also impose term limits. I’m not sure if that is structural or procedural (ie term limits are a qualification for legislators and thus could be considered structural; but it also changes election procedures.
The bill would also change the number of legislators needed to override a veto, which is clearly procedural.
You had blogged about circulators gathering petitions within the non-electioneering zone near polling places. This particular initiative illustrates the problem with that. The chair of the group circulating the petition was also a (successful) candidate for the Republican nomination for governor.
Could a supporter of Bruce Rauner outside the electioneering limit carrying a sign: “Bruce Rauner is for Term Limits” direct voters to a circulator inside the limit? And could a circulator avoid discussing Rauner’s candidacy. What if a voter asked who was backing this petition?