“at the request of Attorney General Hardy Myers for Department of Justice”

SECTION 8. [. . .]
(5) Except as provided in this subsection, a decision by the three-judge panel to certify a ballot title to the Secretary of State under this section is final and not subject to review by any court. The three-judge panel may allow a petition for reconsideration of a decision made under this section in the manner provided in the rules of appellate procedure.

SECTION 11. [. . .]
(2) An action filed under this section is the exclusive remedy for challenging whether a proposed state initiative measure or a state measure adopted through the initiative petition process complies with constitutional procedural requirements.

The bill also substitutes the Legislative Counsel for the Attorney General for crafting ballot titles in the first instance.

I can understand why the legislature wants to mandate draconian limits on the initiative process. It is a simple power grab, much like any other battle among the legislative, judicial and executive branches. But here, they go to the extreme of attempting to even confine how and when the Supreme Court can even hear challenges, where all the hoops (rules) must be followed before one can even avail themselves to a hearing before a court. So is the legislature stepping on the toes of the judiciary, or rather are they instead happily giving the Supreme Court the authority they want?

That is, is the Supreme Court the bad apple here and is the legislature just being a happy wimp? I guess they both hate the initiative process. What is it they fear, anyway, democracy and the power of the people to fix any excesses by the in-crowd?

As of Wednesday morning 8:30 AM it had already received its second reading before the house (B-Engrossed version), but had not yet gotten its third reading. It will thus likely come up for a vote today or tomorrow.

I kind of like the option of being able to get all the signatures required, with a ballot title prepared by the organizer, then plop the whole thing at once upon the Elections Division, and then require the government folks to have to whine to the court if there is a problem with wording. Remember, the whole PROCESS BATTLE is all BEFORE the voters get to vote on an issue, the battle is over PREVENTING A VOTE.

They want to bump the number of signatures required before ASKING for a ballot title from 25 to 2,500.

Requires filing of at least 2,500 signatures with prospective petition for state initiative petition for purposes of obtaining ballot title.

Why stop there -- why not just bump it up to the full number of signatures required for inclusion on the ballot and spare us the head ache of the pre-petition petition gamesmanship? Why not just go psyco and demand the full number of signatures twice, once just to obtain a ballot title, then again to get on the ballot. I suppose we could do the same for basic voting and poll the voters a second time just to make sure they meant what they said in the first vote, just to be sure. (I suppose it would not sound so crazy if you were a committee chairperson who can routinely kill a bill in the legislature by simply letting it die in your hands. They are merely extending the same to the initiative process, creating arcane twisted hoops so that each branch of government gets a fair shot at killing an initiative while it is still in its formative stages.)