Hobbs questions citizen initiative process as anti-voucher measure fails to make it on the ballot

Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs said Thursday that lawmakers are at least partially to blame for an anti-voucher citizen initiative failing to make it on the ballot.

Voters won’t get the chance to weigh in on the measure this November, which would have put significant restrictions on Arizona’s private school voucher program, called Empowerment Scholarship Accounts.

Hobbs said that’s partly because state lawmakers have chipped away at the citizen initiative process for years, making it more difficult for voters to get ballot measures through.

“I spent eight years in the Legislature watching attacks on our constitutional right to citizens initiative and continuing to raise the bar on getting measures on the ballot, and I voted against most of those — probably all of them,” Hobbs said.

Hobbs and legislative Democrats also want to restrict vouchers. But none of their efforts have made it through the Republican-controlled state Legislature.

What happened to Prop. 212?

The Arizona Education Association and Save Our Schools AZ reportedly gathered 415,438 signatures to get the Protect Education Act on the ballot, later labeled Prop. 212.

The AEA is the state’s largest public school teachers union and SOSAZ is a public education advocacy group.

The initiative needed 255,949 of those signatures to qualify for the ballot and ultimately fell about 12,000 short of that, following a legal battle.

The Goldwater Institute and the Arizona Free Enterprise Club challenged the signature count in court.

Much of the fight came down to the issue of duplicate signatures. The Secretary of State’s Office struck some duplicate signatures in their review of the measure’s petition sheets and more were struck out in court.

After that, county recorders reviewed a random sample of the signatures and determined a validity rate. That rate was applied to the final full count of signatures to determine how many of them were valid.

Proponents of the measure argued that using that method could potentially double-county invalid duplicate signatures and result in unfairly discarding valid signatures in the final count.

The Arizona Supreme Court wasn’t swayed by that argument and agreed with a trial court’s method of calculating the signatures.

Several of the signatures were thrown out because the signature gatherers hired to collect them were disqualified.

A signature gatherer must be eligible to vote, though not necessarily registered to vote, and they don’t have to live in Arizona. In other words, signature gatherers must be at least 18 years old, a U.S. citizen, not a felon or convicted of a dishonesty crime.

Multiple signature gatherers were rejected due to their criminal history, making all their signatures invalid.

Signatures can be rejected for other reasons as well, such as gatherers providing incomplete information like their address or the date of the petition signing.

In the wake of Prop. 212’s failure, Sen. Mitzi Epstein (D-Tempe) called for initiative-backers to be allowed to collect signatures online, instead of in person with paper sheets.

“The flawed formula caused too many voters’ signatures to not be counted. AZ needs a law to allow signatures to be gathered online with E-Qual for citizen initiatives. It’s fair. Candidates use E-Qual for their nominating petitions. Validate each signer as a voter in real time,” Epstein wrote on X.

Allowing voters to sign petitions online is an idea that’s been floated multiple times over the years but has never made it into state law.

KJZZ

Lawmakers’ efforts to change the initiative process

Over the years, Arizona legislators have made many alterations to the citizen initiative process and attempted other changes, which didn't succeed.

In 2017, Republican lawmakers passed a bill on party lines which banned payment to petition circulators on the basis of how many signatures they collect.

That year, lawmakers also passed a bill altering the standard for citizen initiatives from “substantial compliance” to “strict compliance" with legal standards.

In 2022, lawmakers put a measure on the ballot increasing the percentage of votes a ballot measure needs to get to pass if it affects taxes. Voters passed the proposal, so instead of a simple majority, tax-related measures now only pass if they get 60% of votes.

That same year, voters passed another measure lawmakers put on the ballot requiring citizen initiatives to be limited to a single subject.

But in 2022, voters rejected Prop. 128. That measure would have given lawmakers the power to supersede a citizen initiative if any of the language in the initiative is found to be unconstitutional.

In 2024, GOP lawmakers put a measure on the ballot which would make it easier to defeat citizen initiatives in court before they make it on the ballot by challenging the proposal’s constitutionality.

Voters rejected the measure, which was labeled Prop. 136.

In that election, voters defeated another measure lawmakers put on the ballot — Prop. 134. That would have required gatherers to collect signatures in each of the state’s 30 legislative districts.

Earlier this year, GOP state lawmakers tried to get out ahead of the Protect Education Act by passing their own “poison pill ballot measure," which was ostensibly about protecting education funding for military families but contained a clause that would have killed the Protect Education Act if voters passed both.

The poison pill measure won’t be on the ballot either.

Hobbs supported one local citizen initiative but quashed another

Last year, Hobbs signed legislation superseding the opportunity for Scottsdale voters to reject a tech company called Axon building its corporate headquarters in the city.

Local voters gathered signatures to put a measure on the 2026 ballot which would have rejected the project, but Hobbs and state lawmakers intervened.

The legislation preempts Scottsdale from voting on the initiative to block Axon, ensuring the project can proceed.

Hobbs and her supporters argued that because Axon is such a large company, the economic investment affects the whole state and isn’t something Scottsdale voters should get to deceive on unilaterally.

Hobbs said Thursday that passing the Axon bill was a “different situation” than lawmakers putting their thumb on the scale with citizen initiatives.

“This is an Arizona-grown company, a company that was going to take their thousands of jobs to Florida or Texas, and we stopped that from happening. … This company needed answers to make decisions about their economic future in Arizona and I'm really proud that we worked together for a bipartisan bill across the finish line that kept them here, kept their jobs here,” Hobbs said.

Hobbs noted that she took different action on a data center issue in southern Arizona earlier this year. 

A controversial data center called Project Blue wants to set up shop in Marana.

Lawmakers put up a bill that would have allowed citizen referendum petitions to be withdrawn before they’re put up for a vote.

Residents collected signatures to put the data center project up for a vote and the petitions were rejected.

Hobbs supports Axon’s investment in Arizona but is pushing for reigning in tax breaks to data centers like Project Blue and voiced concerns over their energy and water use.

“We did exactly the opposite [of Axon] in Marana. There was a data center issue, they were trying to keep it off the ballot, I vetoed that legislation,” Hobbs said.