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Anonymous ID: 78c688 Oct. 9, 2024, 2:24 a.m. No.21733996   🗄️.is đź”—kun   >>3998 >>4012 >>4016 >>4157 >>4421

https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/2024/10/08/arizona-proposition-vote-judges-ballot-initiatives/75368447007/?taid=6705d91b6f49650001e7ba0b&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

 

Maybe Stephen Richer is terrified, but not most. I mean he's literally a rat human hybrid.

 

Also that little fortress wall he built around the vote counter's nest to protect America from Americans (60 Minutes interview attached) seems to speak a lot about him.

 

FROM THE ARTICLE, NOT MY THOUGHTS

Proposition 133

Republican lawmakers are hoping to sucker us into amending the state constitution to protect partisan primaries — those lightly attended July elections when most legislative and congressional seats are filled, thanks to our appalling shortage of truly competitive districts.

 

The logical question to consider is this: Why on earth are we giving such wildly disproportionate power to the two parties when a third of the state’s 4.1 million voters belong to neither?

 

There’s a competing proposal on the ballot, one put there by citizens. Proposition 140, the Make Elections Fair Arizona Act, would scrap our partisan primaries, replacing them with a single open primary in which all candidates would run and all voters would decide who moves on to the November ballot.

 

Now that is an idea whose time has surely come.

 

Proposition 134

Republicans and the business community have been angry about the voters’ right to make laws via initiative since 2016, when voters raised the minimum wage.

 

Since then, the Legislature has dreamed up new and creative ways to weaken our constitutional right to make laws at the ballot box.

 

And so comes Proposition 134, making it harder to get an initiative on the ballot.

 

Currently, an initiative campaign must get signatures equal to least 10% of those who voted in the last gubernatorial election — 15% if it’s a constitutional change — to qualify for the ballot.

 

Proposition 134 would mandate that the percentage requirement be met not just statewide but in each of the state’s 30 legislative districts.

 

“It is time to improve our citizens’ initiative process by ensuring it truly reflects the will of citizens across our state,” the Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Scot Mussi wrote in support of the plan.

 

Or put another way, by giving voters in a single legislative district — in ruby red Mohave County, for example, or in staunchly blue west Phoenix — veto power, preventing a proposal that is supported by hundreds of thousands of voters from ever reaching the ballot.

 

Blocking millions more from deciding whether it would be good law.

 

Proposition 136

Yet another plan to weaken our right to make laws.

 

This time, by allowing early lawsuits to challenge the constitutionality of a proposed initiative — petitioning to have it removed from the ballot even before it gets to the ballot.

 

Simply put, this proposal would allow certain special interests (like, say the Arizona Free Enterprise Club) to stop an initiative campaign dead in its tracks before it even gets under way.

 

The free enterprising Mussi calls it “a simple, common-sense reform that ensures that unconstitutional measures are not placed on the ballot.”

 

But Proposition 136 isn’t really about ensuring that voter-enacted laws are constitutional. Those lawsuits already can happen (and usually do) after the vote but before a new law takes effect.

 

This is about ensuring initiatives never even get that far, forcing initiative campaigns to lawyer up early or maybe just throw in the towel altogether.

 

Proposition 137

Republicans also want us to limit our power to get rid of judges. Specifically, appellate judges and those in superior courts in Maricopa, Pima, Pinal and Coconino counties who fall under the 50-year-old merit selection system.

 

To be clear, I have a relative on one of those courts. To be even more clear, I cannot imagine why we would give up our right to bounce her or any other judge out of office, if we think it’s warranted.

 

Currently, these judges are appointed by the governor from a list of nominees who are vetted by what are supposed to be nonpartisan commissions. They then periodically go on the ballot, to be retained — or rejected — by voters.

 

Proposition 137 would give most judges a pass on facing voters, requiring them to go on the ballot only under certain, rare circumstances, including a felony conviction or a poor rating from the Commission on Judicial Performance Review.

 

I understand the thinking. The list of judges is long, and nobody knows much about them.

 

That, however, doesn’t justify stripping us of our power to hold them accountable."