The Arizona GOP is making an attempt to suppress electoral initiatives as Dems attempt to use them to dam election restrictions

Apart from the merits of this requirement, it has been interpreted very differently by the courts. The Michigan Supreme Court, for example, allowed a 2018 redistribution reform package with multiple contiguous planks as the only measure in front of voters. In 2006, however, Florida’s highest court took the one-issue rule to extremes, saying that a proposed change that would both establish a new reallocation commission and set new requirements for drawing districts broke the rule – and that Initiative nullified from the ballot.

The question, then, is whether the Arizona Supreme Court will take an approach closer to Michigan or Florida. Reformers have cause for concern, however, as Republican Governor Doug Ducey overcrowded the court in 2016 by adding two seats to ensure tough Conservative scrutiny.

The second amendment to the GOP, meanwhile, would weaken Arizona’s unusually strong law known as the Voter Protection Act, which makes it difficult for lawmakers to change voter-approved laws that voters passed in 1998 after lawmakers launched an initiative to legalize medical marijuana had refused had been passed two years earlier.

The VPA only allows legislative changes enacted on the initiative if the legislature can raise a three-quarters majority can only be overturned at the ballot box. But the new amendment to the GOP would enable the legislature, if passed, to make significant changes to the laws approved by the voters with simple majorities if a federal or regional court declares even part of such a law to be unconstitutional.

This change would allow Republicans to crush another 1998 initiative called the Clean Elections Act, which introduced a strong public campaign funding regime and ethical rules for state elections. In a 5-4 ruling in 2011, the Conservatives of the US Supreme Court overturned part of the law that granted publicly funded candidates larger sums when rivals were more self-funded, but otherwise the court left most of that Law intact and isolated from GOP interference. As a result, if voters approve this latest change, Republicans could attack the Clean Elections Act and potentially many other voter-approved laws in ways that undermine their purpose.

Arizona is just one of many states in the past decade where Republicans have tried to enact new election restrictions and gerrymanders, and then tried to complicate electoral initiatives after voters came up in the face of the GOP’s efforts to sabotage representative democracy had resorted to direct democracy. The 2022 election marks a continuation of this trend as the Arizona Democrats launched a veto referendum that, if it got to the ballot, would block the recently passed GOP bill that would make the mailing list permanent Arizona will finish until voters have a chance to do so next year weigh in.

The Democrats are also trying to veto Republican laws that have deprived Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs’ power to settle proxy claims and instead transferred GOP Attorney General Mark Brnovich – but only until the end of her term next year. In addition, they are trying to block a new Republican-backed law banning private grants to electoral administration after philanthropic groups allocated hundreds of millions nationwide in 2020 to tackle chronic underfunding, along with so-called “electoral security” – Measures promoted by Trump conspiracy theorists that could compromise voter privacy.

However, Republicans have so far been unable to put two more restrictions on the ballot initiative for the 2022 ballot after being pushed forward in the legislature earlier this year. Instead of the current simple majority, these proposals would have required 60% support for electoral initiatives and a two-thirds majority for voters to raise taxes.