Homeless in Arizona

While J.D. Mesnard and Vince Leach's law won't make it illegal for the people to pass voter initiatives, it will for all purposes make it effectively impossible for anybody who doesn't have millions of dollars in cold hard cash to get an initiative on the ballot and passed.

The voters need to throw J.D. Mesnard and Vince Leach out of office. They are government tyrants who don't work for the people.

Source

Lawmakers: The truth about our ballot initiative bill

J.D. Mesnard and Vince Leach, AZ We See It 6:14 a.m. MT March 13, 2017

Our Turn: House Bill 2404 removes the incentive for fraud and forgery among paid petition circulators. It's not an attack on your constitutional rights.

Arizona is one of 15 states that affords its citizens the right to make laws and amend our state Constitution through the initiative process. [And government tyrants J.D. Mesnard and Vince Leach want to make it impossible for citizens to amend our laws in Arizona]

Arizonans used this legislative tool for the first time in 1912 to grant women the right to vote, and we’ve used it a number of times since to enact meaningful improvements to our state, like making Arizona a Right-to-Work state and establishing a state holiday in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Unfortunately, in recent years the initiative process has been used less by Arizonans and more by out-of-state special interests that put up money to get initiatives on the ballot but don’t have to live with the fallout created by many of their efforts. [Yea, like that medial marijuana issue which J.D. Mesnard and Vince Leach hate. And they certainly don't want us passing a recreational marijuana law]

Some petition circulators cash in on initiative campaigns by charging clients per signature. With a financial motive to record as many signatures as possible, petition circulators resort to forgery. [Oddly the laws proposed by J.D. Mesnard and Vince Leach will allowed elected officials to pay by the signature, but won't allow citizens initiatives to pay by the signatures. They are both hypocrites]

What HB 2404 would actually do

How bad is it? The petition circulation firm that gathered signatures for an initiative last year sued the initiative committee for non-payment. The committee responded to the lawsuit by reminding the firm that it had collected tens of thousands of invalid signatures. Yet, because of an ambiguity in current law, that initiative qualified for the ballot despite a shortage of valid signatures.

Former Gov. Janet Napolitano used her State of the State address in 2009 to suggest banning the practice of per-signature payment in Arizona, asking legislators “to crack down on signature fraud” by enacting the reform.

To restore integrity to our initiative process, we’ve introduced House Bill 2404. [In government double speak J.D. Mesnard and Vince Leach are saying they don't want us serfs passing initiatives] Similar to laws in other states, the bill removes the incentive for fraud and forgery by prohibiting the payment of petition circulators on a per-signature basis and gives opponents of a proposed initiative 10 business days to challenge questionable signatures. The bill has already passed the Arizona House of Representatives and is awaiting action in the Senate.

Don't buy the smear campaign

While critics have launched hyperbolic smears on the bill as an attack on Arizonans’ constitutional rights, Arizonans would be able to continue utilizing the initiative as our state’s founders envisioned – as a citizen-driven form of direct democracy. [Well J.D. Mesnard and Vince Leach will allow any citizen who is a multi-millionaire to continue this for for the rest of us it will effectively be impossible]

Initiative campaigns would even still be able to pay petition circulators to collect their signatures. They just wouldn’t be able to pay them per signature, thereby removing the incentive for circulators to turn in large numbers of fraudulent signatures.

This effort isn’t about giving one party a leg up on the other or diluting the ability of Arizonans to make their own laws. This is about restoring integrity to the initiative process by rooting out fraud. [Yea, and mostly about preventing us serfs, called the people from putting initiative on the ballot]

Implementing this simple reform, advocated by a Democratic governor and Republican legislators, will improve our citizen initiative process, and Arizonans can get back to using the process as it was intended.

J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, is the speaker of the House in the Arizona Legislature. Rep. Vince Leach, a Republican, represents Legislative District 11 in central-southern Arizona, including Marana. Email them at jmesnard@azleg.gov and vleach@azleg.gov