Would these bills silence citizen voices?

 Brawner

How do you make Arkansas’ initiative process as clean as possible without making it impossible for citizens to initiate anything?

That balance must be considered as state House lawmakers take up bills by Sen. Kim Hammer, R-Benton, and Rep. Kendon Underwood, R-Cave Springs.

The bills, which passed the Senate on Wednesday, Feb. 12, would change the signature collection process for passing citizen-led constitutional amendments and initiated acts, which are laws passed by the people. Recent citizen initiatives have raised the minimum wage, legalized medical marijuana and, in the last election, canceled the the Pope County casino.

Senate Bills 207-211, in order, would: – Require canvassers to tell potential signers that petition fraud is a Class A misdemeanor; – Require signers to present a photo ID; – Let the secretary of state disqualify all the signatures collected by a canvasser if they have violated election law; – Require petitioners to read or listen to the ballot title being read before signing; – Require canvassers to submit an affidavit before the signatures they collect are counted.

The bills easily passed the Senate on Feb. 12 with Republican senators generally voting for them, with some exceptions, and all Democrats voting against all of them. Hammer told senators that they provide guardrails, protect the integrity of the process and protect against outside interference.

The full Senate vote followed a lengthy session in the Senate State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee the day before. Senators heard testimony from citizens about untruthful canvassers. Opponents warned that the bills could have a chilling effect. It was said one ballot title would take eight minutes to read.

The Arkansas Constitution places a high value on the initiative process. Article 5, the section pertaining to legislation, starts by saying that while the General Assembly passes laws, “the people reserve to themselves the power” to propose laws. In fact, the article’s first section describes the initiative process before it talks about the House and Senate. Furthermore, as Sen. Clarke Tucker, D-Little Rock, explained to the Senate, the Constitution prohibits laws interfering with the people’s right to procure petitions.

The Constitution is so explicit, in fact, that David Couch, an attorney who led the initiative efforts to increase the state’s minimum wage and legalize medical marijuana, says the bills are “obviously unconstitutional” and would be challenged in federal court. Hammer told senators that Attorney General Tim Griffin has said his office can defend the bills.

If the bills do pass, it would not be the first time elected officials have made the initiative process harder. In fact, lawmakers have passed laws to make petition-gathering harder in each regular session since 2013, Tucker said. Furthermore, the Arkansas Supreme Court has repeatedly disqualified ballot measures based on signature collection technical violations. One year the justices said canvassers violated a new state law that courts later ruled was impossible to comply with.

Each law increases the ability for signatures to be challenged in court, and these would be five of them. As Sen. Jimmy Hickey, R-Texarkana, noted, if it can be shown that a canvasser failed to notify 8-10 petitioners of the fraud provision, then all 2,000 signatures the canvasser might have collected would be disqualified.

There is an argument to be made against the initiative process. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Arkansas is one of only 24 states with citizen initiative processes. Many might say that the nation’s Founding Fathers feared democracy and wanted laws made by elected officials. You probably have heard what Ben Franklin said when asked what kind of government they had created: “A republic, Ma’am, if you can keep it.”

Still, Arkansas is not a republic. It’s a state within a republic whose motto is “Regnat Populus,” which is Latin for “the people rule.” Its Constitution values direct democracy, and apparently, so do many citizens. In 2020 and 2022, lawmakers asked voters to make the initiative process harder. Voters said no both times.

There’s no doubt that abuses occur with the initiative process, and there’s nothing wrong with trying to improve it. Lawmaking should be hard — for citizens and for legislators — and amending the Constitution should be particularly difficult.

The question before the House of Representatives is, do these bills protect the integrity of the initiative, or will they legislate it out of existence? The Senate has already spoken.

•••

Steve Brawner’s column is syndicated to 17 outlets in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@ mac.com.