Homeless in Arizona

The bill gives our elected officials all kinds of trivial nit picking reasons to invalidate signatures on petitions.

Of course these trivial nit picking reasons only apply to voter initiatives. They don't apply to the petitions that politicians have to circulate to run for office.

Sounds like are elected officials are big time hypocrites when it comes to passing laws.

I don't know if this law would affect the RAD initiatives to legalize marijuana and all drugs or the Safer Arizona initiative to legalize marijuana.

If the law passes it probably will be in effect in July 2018 when the signatures for the RAD and Safer Arizona initiatives are counted and might be used to shut them both down.

But since both the RAD initiative and Safer Arizona initiatives were created before the law was passed I don't know if the law would apply to them.

Perhaps some of you lawyers can comment on this.

Of course the bottom line is our elected officials are a bunch of tyrants who don't want us serfs passing laws.

Source

Montini: Two-faced lawmakers rob your initiative rights, preserve theirs

EJ Montini , The Republic | azcentral.com Published 1:30 p.m. MT March 27, 2017

Last week Gov. Doug Ducey signed House Bill 2404, which will make it practically impossible to get an initiative on the ballot by banning the practice of paying circulators for each signature they collect.

But only for initiatives proposed by us – citizens.

That’s right.

Political candidates weren’t included in that law. They can still pay signature gatherers to help with their nominating petitions.

Which begs the question:

Hypocrisy much?

And the Republicans who control Legislature aren't done yet.

Two words for lawmakers: Hypocrisy much?

On Tuesday lawmakers will consider a “strike everything” amendment to House Bill 2244. In this instance, the new wording would require courts to strictly enforce all aspects of the signature gathering process, meaning that opposition parties (like the Chamber of Commerce or the politicians they own) could nitpick their way through a petition looking for the tiniest reasons to toss a signature.

For example, if I signed a petition “E.J. Montini” rather than “Edward James Montini,” the way it appears on my voter registration card (originally signed in the dark ages), it might be challenged. Or maybe there was a slight error in the address. Or a misspelling. Or a slight variation on the size of the paper. Really. Who knows?

Once again, however, the new law would apply to citizen initiatives but not to political candidates gathering signatures to qualify for the ballot.

The sponsor of the strike everything amendment, Republican Sen. Debbie Lesko, wrote, “Strict compliance with the constitutional and statutory requirements for the initiative process and in the application and enforcement of those requirements provides the surest method for safeguarding the integrity and accuracy of the initiative process…”

If that's true, what about lawmakers?

If Lesko is correct, why not enact the same signature-collecting rules for politicians?

Like I said:

Hypocrisy much?