It would be foolish of me to say with 100 percent certainty that the Arizona Supreme Court ruling against the “Invest in Education” initiative was politically motivated. I’m only 95 percent certain they wanted to knock the initiative off the ballot for political reasons — with a 5 percent margin of error.
The Supreme Court decision against Invest in Ed fits a little too neatly with the zero tolerance policy toward citizen initiatives enacted by the Republican majority legislature and signed by Governor Ducey to be a coincidence.
The legislature’s zero policy law requires “strict compliance” with the rules governing petitions. Ridiculously strict compliance. If people carrying petitions make a mistake in the way they fill it out, no matter how small, the entire petition and all its signatures can be tossed. If people signing a petition go outside the lines with their signatures or other information — if the tail of a “g” or a “y” extends outside the line — that signature can be thrown out.
Why the new ridiculously strict compliance law? Because Republicans hate citizen initiatives. They’ll do whatever they can do to make it harder for them to make it to the ballot.
It’s easy to understand why. This year a citizen initiative limiting one of Republicans’ pet projects, private school vouchers, is on the ballot. So is an initiative to increase the use of clean energy, something Republicans all over the country oppose so deeply, they’ve decided to ignore science, thermometers and their own eyes and say, “Climate change? What climate change?”
Then there are the two citizen initiatives that didn’t make it. One would have banned Dark Money, the lifeblood running through the veins of Republican politics. The other is Invest in Ed, which would have made people whose taxable income is over $250,000 ($500,000 for couples) pay a higher income tax rate.
That’s four initiatives Republicans despise. They never would let ideas like those get anywhere near the floor of the legislature, and they hate it that citizens have the ability to go around the Republican political stranglehold on the state by using the initiative process.
“Strict compliance” can be used to roadblock some of the initiatives, but it’s clearly not enough. Even with the strict compliance law, Invest in Ed had all the valid signatures it needed, and more, to make it on the ballot. So big money in the form of The Chamber of Commerce took the next step and went after the initiative in the courts. The Chamber’s lawyers found two problems with the 100 word statement on the petitions. First, the statement didn’t mention that the initiative would mean a small boost to the taxes of people who made less than a quarter of a million dollars. Second — I’m not making this up — the initiative used the word “percent” where it should have used “percentage.”
Those two problems, the Chamber’s lawyers contended, misled and confused petition signers — you know, those signers who say, “Let me inspect the summary of the initiative word by word to see exactly what it says before I sign.” Funny thing is, compulsive reader that I am, I’ve never scrutinized one of those summaries, and I don’t know anyone who has. I doubt even the lawyers pressing the Chamber’s case have read petition summaries carefully. But someone somewhere may have taken time to read the summary before signing and been misled and confused. Because of that, the lawyers argued, any problems with the summary are reason to throw out the initiative.
The County Superior Court Judge who first heard the case disagreed and ruled against the Chamber. The Chamber appealed the ruling to the state Supreme Court, which voted 5-2 in its favor. The Invest in Ed initiative was dead.
A 5-2 decision sounds definitive. With that kind of a margin, it would seem, the court must have considered the initiative summary and the law carefully, then ruled correctly. Except, two of those justices were appointed by Ducey after he and the legislature increased the number of justices from five to seven. Get rid of those two, and the decision had a slim 3-2 margin. Of the three ruling for the Chamber, two were appointed by Jan Brewer, the third by Ducey. Only one justice on the court was appointed by a Democratic governor, and he was joined by a Brewer-appointed justice in a bipartisan minority opinion saying the initiative should have been allowed to go in front of the voters.
The two dissenting justices agreed with the County Superior Court judge that perfection isn’t a requirement in the writing of initiatives. True, the language in the summary was ambiguous, they wrote, but that’s an issue to be raised in the campaign. The voters should be allowed to vote for the initiative on its merits.
The majority accepted the Chamber’s arguments whole. They even agreed with the over-the-top notion that substituting “percent” for “percentage” could have confused petition signers, a clear sign they were willing to use any argument, no matter how petty, to justify keeping the initiative off the ballot.
Zero tolerance in the courts joins with “strict compliance” in the law to create a one-two punch that puts every citizen initiative in peril. Next election season, it will be even harder for citizens to put initiatives in front of voters.
This article appears in Oct 25-31, 2018.
don’t whine act. the republican fascist police state of arizona is vulnerable. has the roman spaceship commander said in star trek. “he has done what I would have done hang back look for weakness!” their are plenty of vulnerable weak spots for the republican fascist police state. I have spent 50 years looking for weak spots. I will give you one of the best examples jury nullification. perfectly legal to find any minority guilty of anything. also refuse to find guilty anyone guilty in despite with big business or brings to justice a republican fascist. their are plenty more direct actions in other areas. years of democratic whinning has got us squat! no more mr. nice guy liberal punching bags. as the kleons say revenge is a dish best eaten cold. ask republicans how will you protect yourself from us when we take power. or as paul newman said to richard boon in the movie hondo “hey I got a question how you going to get back down the hill?” if you think this is to tuff you are part of the liberal punching bags for republicans.
What is unsaid but should be said, is VOTE NO to retain Bolick and Pelander. Can you imagine the massive outcry if Democrats tried courtpacking?
Prop. 305 is a referendum, not an initiative. It would not limit private school vouchers; passage would expand the state’s voucher program.
Frankly, Im really pissed that this informative article comes out the VERY LAST DAY to mail in an early ballot! What took you so damn long?? This is the kind of info that needed to come out 7-10 days ago as so many of us were trying to figure out the pluses & minuses of the judges, the propositions, etc!!
IF youre going to be a legitimate alternative news source, then it obligates you to ALSO BEING a RELEVANT news source, & that means publishing your articles in a timely fashion that MAKES THEM USEFUL!! Frankly, your reporting on this years midterm election issues has NOT been done in a way thats been as useful as it could have been, & THAT AFFECTS ELECTION RESULTS! PS; if you dont like my capitalizing, just be glad Im not standing in front of your editor & giving him the sh*t storm he deserves!
He’s too busy promoting members of the egregious local Democratic-Party-Public-Education-Political-Machine and disparaging the education systems that are allowing families to continue to exit mismanaged TUSD to get coverage of issues like this out to the public within a reasonable time frame.
David writes, “Funny thing is, compulsive reader that I am, I’ve never scrutinized one of those [ballot initiative proposition] summaries, and I don’t know anyone who has.” Then on what basis are he and all the other people who don’t bother to read the language of the proposition making their votes? On what their PARTY recommends? When you take a close look at how the public-education-promoting Democrats run their operations in Southern Arizona, you can find pervasive evidence that the party is not able to help its members achieve accurate understanding of the policies and initiatives they are promoting or opposing. Many of the people they whip up into a fury over “Save Our [Party Machine Run] Public Schools!!!” don’t know what the various STOs now running are or what the differences are in how STOs operate, they don’t know the differences in application between individual and corporate tax credits or the difference between a tax credit and an ESA, they don’t properly understand the difference between a non-profit charter and a for-profit one. I’ve even seen commenters in these streams betray inability to recognize the difference between charters and private-school funding vouchers or ESAs. All they know is that the Democratic Party has told them that all of these things are BAD! So why bother to understand the policy, right? On the Invest in Ed initiative the public was, it seems from what David writes here, deliberately misled into believing that the initiative would have no increased tax consequences for them, just for those Rich-People-Bad-Guys the Democrats love to target with their policy initiatives. That is absolutely par for the course with the dishonest, manipulative, deliberately selective way these “democratists” work with the cohorts that follow them. No need to get it right or represent it accurately, just SHOVE it through and trick people into voting for it by any means possible.
So sorry, David, but I and a lot of other people I know don’t want policy implemented in this state on the basis of what the Southern Arizona Democrats tell their largely misinformed Party members about what voter initiatives mean. I’m good with making it harder to put the kinds of things you and some of your friends cook up on the ballot. But thanks for sharing your point of view on the subject.
And this is the media we are left with. Any wonder about all the opposition and downright hatred of the misinformation?
But watch the week after the election just how well they can explain them all. We are poorly served.
Arizona could go the way of Kansas, whose idiot in charge has now taken a position in the Trump catastrophe. Ex-Governor , Sam Brownback, who cut Kansas taxes to the bone and then to the marrow left Kansas so far in the red it looked like Trump Casino profits. Teachers fled Kansas like Russians leaving Trump Tower when Mueller showed up. Now Kansans are willing to let anybody that has finished high school teach their kids rather than not have any education at all. When it comes to a showdown between big business and public education you can bet your ass that Republicans are putting their money behind business. By the way, spell supreme with a small “s” because in Arizona they don’t deserve any respect in their partisan shenanigans.
Research all claims.
“But looking at objective government figures, the results are far more positive. According to Census Bureau data, Kansas total tax revenues actually rose in 2012, the year the tax cut took effect, to $7.4 billion a 9 percent increase from $6.8 billion in 2011. Revenues grew further to $7.6 billion in 2013. “
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/dont-let-the-way-kansas-handled-tax-cuts-be-used-as-an-excuse-to-block-federal-cuts
July 2016, Now in the third year of his bold tax experiment, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback can see the ways in which reducing (and, in many cases, eliminating) the state income tax is yielding incremental, positive effects for Kansans.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rexsinquefield/2016/07/18/kansas-an-unsung-hero-for-economic-growth/
Kansas saw strong results. Unemployment is down to 3.7%, the lowest in 16 years. The state set a record for new businesses every year since cutting income taxes. The small businesses the tax cuts targeted created 98% of new private sector jobs in our state. Despite these strong results, many blamed our budget challenges on these cuts, ignoring the substantial downturn in global agriculture and energy markets.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/06/25/kansas-tax-cuts-produced-strong-results-editorials-debates/103186208/
Global agricultural downturn hurt Kansas. Tax cuts helped.
Shenanigans? I see one.