On Monday, April 12th, Arizona State University students, state and national voices, and public and private sector leaders alike heard from some of the United States’ and Arizona’s foremost thinkers on the topic of initiative process reform. 

The conversation was moderated by former Arizona U.S. Senator Jon Kyl, and featured panelists Maria Baier, Dr. John Leshy, and Robert Robb. 

The conversation started with discussion about how the initiative process in Arizona currently functions and how it has progressed since its inception in the early 20th century. It was hosted at Arizona State University by the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership () and the .

The initiative process “has become, in recent years, less of a check on the Legislature and more of a substitute,” said Robert Robb, editorial columnist for the Arizona Republic.  

Voter Protection Act’s impact

One of the points made by the panelists regarded the Voter Protection Act and how the Act has altered the usage of the initiative process in the state. 

Passed in 1998, the Act restricted the ability of the Legislature and the governor to amend passed initiatives, locking them into statute or the state constitution with little recourse for change.

“The very thing that was put into place to protect the voices of ordinary people has now been co-opted by wealth and power,” said Maria Baier speaking to the outside influence on initiative measures. 

This was a point of contention as the panelists all acknowledged that after the decision made in Citizens United, campaign contributions were protected as a form of speech. Former Senator Jon Kyl said, “Now we see a situation where money on both sides of the proposition talks. And without it you’re liable to not be able to get your point across.”

Campaign finance

Dr. John Leshy, a professor at UC Hastings Law School, said that at one point he believed the solution to preserving democracy was more financial disclosure from campaigns. However, after having resided in California and seeing the passage of Proposition 22 in 2020, Leshy came to the conclusion that so much money and so many interests are involved in the electoral process that voters already understand the influence of special interests.

In Arizona, Proposition 208 was funded largely by out-of-state special interests. An investigation conducted by �������� in September of 2020 revealed that 99.3% of the Yes on 208’s financing came from out-of-state special interests.

Next generation involvement

The conversation continued on as a SCETL student and an Arizona Junior Fellow asked what the younger generation can do to get involved and make responsible decisions regarding not just the initiative process, but politics as a whole. 

The panelists all offered words of encouragement and optimistic prospects for future generations. Bob Robb in particular spoke to the importance of “putting politics in its place.” He believes that past generations have allowed for politics to be too large a part of society so future generations should not allow it to be so toxic that it affects the other aspects of life. 

Joining Robb was Dr. Leshy, who spoke to the absence of success stories being celebrated because everything is seen as a partisan issue where one side wins and the other loses. Maria Baier and Senator Kyl both spoke to the educational aspect and how it can be the starting point in politics. 

The mission of civic education has been taken up by , which is dedicated to “combin[ing] classic works and altruistic statesmanship to develop a new kind of leader: trained in critical thought, humble about human imperfection, and ready for anything.”

Solutions

Some potential solutions to issues currently experienced by the initiative process were bounced around and debated during the discussion. The overarching theme of how to improve the initiative process was centered around transparency. This includes not only the descriptions of the initiatives when getting petition signatures, but also the name of the initiative themselves. 

Professor Leshy emphasized the importance of education on measures saying, “My remedies for controlling the process have to do with making sure that the voters can understand what’s at stake. Meaning that there are honest titles and honest descriptions.”

Sen. Kyl spoke of his experience in the legislative process to reflect on the quickness of the initiative process. Kyl served as Minority Whip in the United States Senate. “The degree of checks and balances which our federal constitution, and there are similar measures in the Arizona Constitution, imposes are worthwhile. The more thought you put into something and the more approvals that are required for it to become alw, the more likely it will be thought out, will be devoid of errors, and have more supporters behind it.” 

An additional proposal that appears to be plausible would amend the Voter Protection Act so as to add a sunset clause on proposed legislation.
To learn more about the Future of Arizona Democracy project, read about the series .

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Supporting small businesses still struggling during the pandemic, bolstering the state’s stressed healthcare system, and reducing the influence of out-of-state interests on Arizona’s ballot initiative process are some of the top items on the Arizona �������� of Commerce and Industry’s wish list for state legislators this year.  

The �������� revealed these and a host of other policy recommendations Friday during its annual 2021 Legislative Forecast Luncheon. Governor Doug Ducey and legislative leaders also discussed their priorities at the event.

“The health crisis has upended not only the Arizona economy but the entire world in this global pandemic,” said Glenn Hamer, president of the Arizona ��������. “Arizona has weathered this pandemic downturn just about better than any state and, as I’ve said many times, our governor has had just the right touch as we have weathered this once-in-a-century event.

“But some of our industries like tourism and hospitality continue to struggle.”

Hamer praised “heroic” healthcare providers and workers in saving lives. He also decried the violent protest that took place at the nation’s Capitol last Wednesday, resulting in five deaths. 

Almost 900 attend event to hear recommendations from business, lawmakers 

The �������� and the Arizona Manufacturers Council hold the event every year to release their of policy recommendations as well as hear from the governor and legislative leaders about their priorities for the legislative session that kicks off today.��

Almost 900 people attended the virtual event including dozens of local, state and federal elected officials and business and community leaders. Hamer thanked the sponsor of the event, Cox Communications, for providing the internet infrastructure that has proved essential for thousands of job creators and their employees to continue thriving during one of the “most disruptive economic periods in history.”

Gov. Ducey calls on everyone to prevent the spread   

This year’s short-term priorities were quite different from last year when state leaders grappled with topics like how to keep up with mushrooming population growth and the booming economy. 

This year, ensuring Arizona citizens receive Covid-19 vaccines quickly and bringing the economy to full recovery were top goals of all who spoke. 

Governor Doug Ducey made several remarks about his priorities for the session. Arizonans’ health is the number one priority now. Getting Arizona citizens vaccinated is critical, he said. 

“This is a modern medical miracle that I don’t think anyone could have foreseen in March,” Ducey said about the successful race to get a vaccine for the deadly virus. “Not only do we have the vaccines here from Pfizer and Moderna and others on the way, they are in the state and they are going into people’s arms.”

Ducey, whose 97-year-old grandmother just received her vaccine, said elderly citizens and health care and essential workers will be vaccinated first before the general public at large. 

Government will also focus on helping the underserved populations in tribal and rural areas.

Communicating that this vaccine is safe and effective is another priority to “get us back to normal as quickly as possible,” the governor said.   

Catching students up post pandemic 

As vaccines roll out, providing resources to education to bring children back up to speed in academics is another important step for economic recovery, Ducey said. Jobs and the economy will naturally follow, he said, and “no state is better positioned than the state of Arizona” to succeed.

Other priorities mentioned by the governor were to continue to work to strengthen relations with Mexico, secure public safety and commerce at the border, and champion Arizona tourism and exports on the world stage. 

Legislative leadership focused on covid, education, small businesses, jobs 

The event also featured a “fireside chat” with Senate President Karen Fann, Senate Minority Leader-elect Rebecca Rios, Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, and House Minority Leader-elect Reginald Bolding, who spoke about what their priorities will be for the session. 

All stated that helping citizens and businesses recover from the pandemic is a major goal. Pressing issues include helping the unemployed get back to work, preventing families from being evicted from their homes, attracting and retaining business and industry, supporting education, and funding infrastructure like broadband access and highway construction.  

�������� business agenda unveiled 

At the event, the �������� and Manufacturers Council provided digital copies of comprehensive policy recommendations for the year. Hundreds of goals with business in mind include topics around education, free trade, civil justice reform, workforce development, the environment and water resources, transportation, tourism and much more. 

Dawn Grove, chair of the ��������’s , said that “first and foremost” priority will be recovery from the pandemic and mitigating the impact from Proposition 208. 

The proposition, adopted in November, created a new tax for top earning individuals and couples, but also is expected to affect tens of thousands of small businesses. These are “pass through” entities, meaning they do not file their income taxes as corporations. Instead, they file under the individual tax code. 

Under the new law, Arizona’s top income tax rate has jumped from thirteenth lowest in the nation to the ninth highest, going from 4.5 to 8 percent, a 78 percent increase, affecting individuals who earn $250,000 and joint filers who earn $500,000. Small business owners who file under the individual tax code are subject to the tax as well. 

The new tax rate could not only hurt Arizona’s small businesses — companies with 500 or fewer employees — but it could dampen investment here, Grove said. 

Among measures being proposed to help the small business community and keep the state a desired location for new industry are reductions in commercial property taxes. 

�������� officials will also be pressing state lawmakers to enact laws to protect employers, cities and towns, and organizations from “predatory” Covid-19 lawsuits. 

Reforming state ballot initiative process another high priority

�������� officials also will be calling on the Legislature to continue to work in a bipartisan manner, pass laws to promote educational excellence in schools, and to reform the state’s ballot initiative law that has been overtaken by out-of-staters, Grove said. 

“Arizona’s propositions, as you know, once passed can almost never be changed even when they cause the opposite of their intended results,” Grove said. “We can and we must do better together. Our second priority will be to advance reforms to protect our initiative system from out-of-state agendas and enhance the credibility of the system. 

“While recent reforms have added some rigor to the citizen initiative system, Arizona’s system remains attractive to out-of-state groups to use our ballot box to implement policies not in Arizona’s best interest, in part because they know it’s so easy to pass here and so hard to change.”

To read the full business agenda from the �������� and Manufacturer’s Council, go to:  .��

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Arizona is a special state, with a unique heritage. When we were founded in 1912, at the height of the American progressive movement, our state’s founding fathers built a dynamic Constitution. 

In October of 1910, 52 Arizona delegates gathered in Phoenix to ratify a new Constitution that could then be submitted to the U.S. Congress for approval. Among the involved at the gathering were “both the Territorial Democratic Party and organized labor,” who joined forces to champion “direct legislation by the people.” 

Among their most notable contributions to Arizona’s constitution were the “initiative, referendum, and recall measures,” which were built with the intent of putting Arizonans in the driver’s seat, brushing aside the special interests of the time: big banks, railroad companies, and corrupt politicians. 

Ironically, in our time, the progressive policies put in place by our founders in the early 20th century have been warped and taken advantage of by out-of-state special interests. 

Voter Protection Act

The Voter Protection Act, passed by voters into law in 1998, was advertised as — you guessed it — a set of protections that would shield Arizona voters from special interests. This translated to further restrictions on the elected governor and Legislature from amending or repealing statewide referendums, setting up a system that allowed initiatives to pass with little path for recourse or even minor amendment. 

Since its passage, the Legislature’s hands have been tied when initiatives that duly-elected representatives of the people found troubling passed into law, even by the slimmest of margins. This has had a damaging effect on Arizona’s electoral system: every two to four years, initiatives have become life-or-death battles on big issues that could easily be misleadingly portrayed to the general public by big spenders. 

Out-of-state special interests

Despite its broad progressive conception in the early 1900s, Arizona’s initiative process has transformed into the antithesis of its original intent. 

In the age of digital advertising, global communications, and a truly international economy, out-of-state special interest groups have come to dominate Arizona’s system of direct democracy. At some point we must ask: direct democracy for whom?

Just this year it was that just .7% (yes, point-seven percent) of the Yes on Proposition 208’s campaign contributions came from in-state individual Arizona donors. The largest union in America, the Washington D.C.-based National Education Association, gave nearly $8,000,000 to the campaign. A Portland, Oregon-based special interest called Stand for Children donated just over $9,000,000. The Open Society Foundation, the infamous George Soros-founded global special interest organization, gave over $500,000. They reported an annual revenue of $376,000,000 in 2018. 

In 2018, Proposition 127, an initiative written in the mold of a California energy mandate that was projected to raise energy prices on working- and middle-class Arizonans, was pushed nearly entirely by California billionaire and 2020 Democrat Presidential candidate Tom Steyer. 

Overall, his campaign $23,931,082.65 on the initiative, which eventually failed spectacularly. Another $39 million was expended by the No on 127 campaign so that Arizonans would be better educated on the truth about the measure.  

The total spending on this race could’ve just as easily been on more productive ends, including the installation of at least 4,701 5kW solar panels, producing over 23,500kW of clean power. 

“It’s notable that this initiative is anything but an Arizona product. This proposal is being forced on our voters by somebody who has no one’s interests in mind but his own,” Democrat state Representative Cesar Chavez at the time. “He and his political strategists have created this initiative as a mirror image of a regulation already adopted in their home state. But I don’t believe a California plan is necessarily the right fit for Arizona.” 

Reforming the process

Arizona’s initiative process as written is a ticket for out-of-state special interests to inject their influence into Arizona politics and make our state their policy playground. It has wasted tens of millions of dollars that could have been spent much more productively. The time is now for initiative process reform. 

So what options are there? A published by the Arizona Junior Fellows explores some possibilities.

Arizona could reform the signature-collection process for initiatives, incorporating a geographic distribution requirement that ensures that all regions and parts of Arizona are properly incorporated into the process of getting initiatives on the ballot. Simply canvassing metro Phoenix and metro Tucson frays relations between urban and rural interests, placing policies with statewide implications on the ballot without statewide buy-in.

We must also take a look at the minimum voter passage threshold. Currently it requires only 50%-plus-one (a simple majority) to institute sweeping legislation into law. Colorado requires a 55% threshold, Nevada requires a simple majority like Arizona but also a requirement that it must pass in two consecutive elections, and other states such as Florida, Illinois, Nebraska, and Massachusetts have differing but nonetheless more rigorous processes for passage. 

Further, Arizona’s elected legislators could revisit allowing the Legislature to further amend and modify passed initiatives. This could be done by amending the Voter Protection Act, so that it takes a supermajority (75%) of legislators in both houses to properly amend a passed initiative. This would ensure that any amendments are broadly agreed upon. 

Necessary bipartisan cooperation

Ultimately, this must be a bipartisan, coalition-building effort. We must seek a long-term solution that crosses party lines and puts Arizona voters first. We cannot afford to mirror the tactics that special interests have used to bring us to this point.

It’s time to reform our initiative process in this upcoming legislative session so that our state government truly reflects the will of Arizona voters, not billionaires and special interests. 

Joe Pitts is the program director for and a student at Arizona State University.

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A from the Arizona �������� Foundation surveys Arizona’s citizen initiative process and looks at how it compares to other states with direct democracy systems, the shortcomings of the system, and potential reforms and remedies.��

The paper assesses the extent to which out-of-state interests influence the Arizona ballot, and whether reforms to the signature gathering process, single-subject rule, and vote thresholds would positively affect direct democracy in Arizona. Proponents of the initiative process highlight the ability to have a direct impact in the way the government runs and makes decisions. As opposed to representative democracy, voting on an initiative gives citizens the opportunity to have a larger impact per person on government policy. When an initiative, whether proposing a statutory change or a constitutional amendment, is put on the ballot, participating voters can vote directly on the issue at hand. 

The paper, however, finds that there are some potential downsides to the process.

Other states with a citizen initiative process have seen these downsides and have worked to amend their processes.

Geographic distribution requirements

There are many issues with Arizona’s initiative process that other states have already addressed. One such issue is that of geographic distribution of the petition signatures. In Arizona there is no requirement regarding how many signatures must come from different legislative or congressional districts.

Maryland, for example, that no more than 50% of signatures can come from any one county or the city of Baltimore. Other states’ requirements are more restrictive, where there can be no more than 25% of signatures obtained from a single county. These restrictions aim to protect against outside influences coming into the state and receiving a disproportionate number of signatures from populous areas, thus underrepresenting folks who live elsewhere. 

The downside of this potential reform is that it also makes it more difficult for petitioners to get the number of signatures needed to make it onto the ballot.

Possibility of reigning in out-of-state petition circulators

Another issue that arises is the ability of interest groups to rely on petition circulators from out of state who work temporarily as petition circulators in Arizona. Many of the states that have an initiative process have restricted the use of outside circulators because they want the circulators to have a vested interest in the changes being made in the state.  

However, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in struck down an earlier attempt at a residency requirement in Arizona because it was not narrowly tailored to meet a state interest and was therefore ruled to be unconstitutional. This makes it more difficult to remedy the situation, but if the Arizona Legislature were able to create a law that was narrowly tailored to further the state’s interest then it might be able to uphold the restriction as in.  

A simple majority vs. a supermajority 

Ballot initiatives in Arizona, whether proposing a new statute or an amendment to the state constitution, can pass if they earn one more ‘yes’ vote than ‘no’ votes. That’s not the case in all states.

The paper looks at examples in other states where measures must receive more than Arizona’s 50-percent-plus-1 requirement or must receive a certain percentage of votes cast in the entire election, guarding against a significant undervote determining an outcome. 

“For example, in Massachusetts, statutory initiatives and constitutional amendments can pass with a simple majority, but only if the total number of votes cast on the measure equals at least 30 percent of the total votes cast in the entire election,” the paper says. “As explained by the National Council of State Legislatures, this means that if 100 voters cast votes in the election, at least 30 of them must cast a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote on the initiative. If that minimum number of participatory votes is not achieved, the initiative fails.” 

“With Arizona’s citizen initiative process increasingly becoming an attractive venue for out-of-state interests to advance their agenda, it is worth examining whether and how to improve and strengthen the system to ensure it represents the best interests of the state,” Arizona �������� Foundation Executive Director Garrick Taylor said. “This paper looks at reforms implemented by other states to preserve the integrity of their initiative systems that lawmakers in Arizona might consider. In light of Arizona’s Voter Protection Act, measures adopted by voters are nearly irreversible and, in the case of negative unintended consequences, nearly irreparable. Legislators and voters ought to consider whether such a high-risk form of lawmaking needs improvement.” 

The paper is part of the Foundation’s Business Ballot project, which focuses on research related to Arizona initiatives, campaigns, and elections. 

The research was conducted and paper authored by �������� Foundation Junior Fellows Taylor Hersch and Stephen Matter.

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In this episode, the Junior Fellows discuss Arizona’s initiative process and the ways interests from outside the state can influence what appears on our ballots.

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