Politics

Lame-Duck Quack-Up Continues: Bill Tweaking Rules for Petition Drives Advances

December 13, 2018, 6:15 AM

A bill that would disempower urban voters in ballot-measure petition drives passed out of the Michigan House on a largely party-line vote yesterday. The lame-duck legislative strategy to make it harder to promote citizen-initiated legislation or constitutional amendments now advances to the Senate for consideration. 

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Kathy Gray at the Freep explains:

The bill would require that no more than 15 percent of the signatures gathered be from any one of the 14 congressional districts in the state. Current law has no geographic requirements on where signatures come from and the original version of the bill contained a 10 percent per-congressional-district signature threshold.

State Rep. James Lower, R-Cedar Lake, said the threshold is necessary to ensure that people from all across the state are included in the petitions for ballot proposals.

In practice, this would mean that a measure like Proposal 1, which legalized recreational marijuana in the November election, would have to gain petition support not only from urban voters downstate (where the idea was popular), but also from rural ones in northern Michigan (where it wasn't). 

The bill contains other reforms, including requiring petition passers to indicate whether they are paid or not. The bill was tweaked to appease one conservative interest group already:

One provision in the original version of the bill would require petition circulators to file an affidavit with the Secretary of State and if they lied on the affidavit, all the signatures they gathered would be thrown out. Genevieve Marnon, a spokeswoman for Right to Life, said that would deter the group’s volunteers from participating in any future petition drives.

The bill passed around 11 p.m. Wednesday. Lansing hijinks continue until adjournment, likely at the end of next week. 


Read more:  Detroit Free Press


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