The right to petition government is not as widely recognized as the First Amendment – or supporters of Amendment 38 – might suggest.
Fewer than half the states have some form of citizen initiative process, and only 15 – including Colorado – allow direct citizen access to both the state constitution and the statute books. There is no national petition process. None.
In Colorado, Amendment 38 would make an already easy petition process even easier. The state constitution, now roughly six or seven times as long as the Constitution of the United States, could grow even fatter.
And more local governments – including schools, counties and special districts for water, sewer, fire protection, recreation and other amusements – would be added to the list of entities subject to petition.
In theory, this is a good thing. It’s a way for dissatisfied citizens to make changes the legislature is too fearful or hidebound or lobbyist-addled to make.
“The Founding Fathers wisely provided us this safety valve to relieve public frustrations that might otherwise lead to lawlessness or bitter apathy,” write the two main sponsors of the amendment, Dennis Polhill and Doug Campbell, on their website, PRA2006.com.
But in practice, all this petitioning has led to the unraveling of representative government. Restrictions coming from the political left and right have left Colorado legislators with very little control over budgeting. Other voter-imposed requirements, from term limits to committee rules, imply strongly that politicians won’t do the right thing unless they’re forced to do it.
But Polhill and Campbell argue that more needs to be done, and it should be easier to do it. Restrictions on citizen ballot issues are “unfair” and “complicated,” they say, and “politicians” are determined to see the “strangulation of petitions.”
“Schemes to raise signature requirements would worsen the problem by making petitioning more difficult for grassroots campaigns,” they say. “Likewise, requiring super-majorities for some ballot issues, so that ‘no’ votes count more than ‘yes’ votes, would be absurdly undemocratic.”
Yet only three states – Colorado, Massachusetts and Nevada – don’t differentiate between statutory changes and constitutional amendments in the number of signatures required, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Colorado’s requirement – 5 percent of the most recent vote for secretary of state – is one of the more lenient. Most states require many more signatures to petition for a constitutional change.
Virtually all states require voter approval of constitutional amendments. But legislators can change statutes, even those approved by voters, by majority vote. Amendment 38 would make that very difficult, while making it easier for citizens to change either laws or the constitution.
It doubles the period for collecting signatures and requires judges to rule quickly on challenges to ballot issues. It bans state election officials from using “technicalities” to invalidate petition signatures.
The state’s business and political establishment is solidly against it. Coloradans for Responsible Reform, the main opposition group, lists 60 organizations on its side. The amendment will “open the floodgates,” warns the Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry.
As if Colorado hadn’t opened them already.
The Initiative & Referendum Institute lists these as the 15 states that allow petitions to change either statutes or constitutions: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon and South Dakota.
Three more allow only constitutional amendments: Florida, Illinois and Mississippi. Six grant access to statutes only: Alaska, Idaho, Maine, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.
And lest anyone think these figures are skewed to show the comparative rarity of the right to petition, it’s worth noting that Polhill is a former board chairman of the compiler of the list, the Initiative & Referendum Institute.
Fred Brown (punditfwb@aol.com), retired Capitol Bureau chief for The Denver Post, is also a political analyst for 9News.
