NOV. BALLOT HAS 15 MEASURES

Cockfighting ban, Lottery fate, medicinal marijuana at issue

By Hal Mattern The Arizona Republic July 3, 1998

When Arizona voters go to the polls in November, they'll be asked to do more
than choose their favorite candidates for state and federal offices.

They also will be asked to ban cockfighting, open primary elections to
members of all political parties, and make it harder for the Legislature to
amend future citizen initiatives.

Voters also will have the chance to decide the fate of the Arizona Lottery,
to approve the allocation of $220 million in state funding to buy vacant
land for preservation, and, for the second time, to authorize doctors to
prescribe marijuana to critically ill patients.

Those are some of the initiatives and referendums that are expected to be
included as propositions on the Nov. 3 general election ballot. Several
others, including proposals to restrict urban growth and to eliminate sales,
property and income taxes in Arizona, failed to attract the needed support
to make the ballot.

"We're going to have 15 measures on the ballot," said Jessica Funkhouser,
state elections director. "That's a lot of issues. It might make (voters)
more interested in the election."

As of the 5 p.m. Thursday deadline, petition signatures had been filed with
the Secretary of State's Office for five citizen initiatives. Such
initiatives allow voters to place proposals directly on the ballot,
bypassing the Legislature.

There also will be two citizen referendums - measures passed by the
Legislature but referred to the ballot by voters for changes - and several
proposals referred to the ballot by lawmakers.

Backers of the citizen initiatives had to file at least 112,961 signatures
from registered voters to qualify for the ballot. Initiatives calling for
constitutional amendments need at least 15 percent of qualified electors -
169,442 signatures - to qualify for the ballot.

It will take more than a month for the signatures to be verified by state
and county officials.

One of the most significant of the citizen initiatives likely to be on the
ballot deals with initiatives themselves. The Voter Protection Act seeks to
amend the state constitution to restrict the Legislature from amending
initiatives already approved by voters. Backers submitted 245,000
signatures.

The Voter Protection Act, backed by Attorney General Grant Woods and
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, would require at least a three-fourths
vote of the Legislature to amend initiatives passed by voters. It also would
prohibit the governor from vetoing such measures.

"This is about opening up government," said Richard Mahoney, a former
Democratic secretary of state and chairman of the initiative drive. "We got
245,000 signatures because people couldn't believe the Legislature was
trying to do these things."

Support for the initiative stems from anger over changes made by the
Legislature to voter-approved initiatives. The most striking example
involved a medical-marijuana initiative passed by voters in 1996 but gutted
by lawmakers in 1997.

Lawmakers, meanwhile, have launched a counterattack, placing their own less
restrictive measure on the ballot.

The Legislature also has placed an open-primary measure on the ballot to
compete with a citizen initiative backed by Woods and Paul Johnson, the
Democratic candidate for governor. Their proposal would amend the
constitution to allow registered voters to cast ballots in primary elections
for any candidate, regardless of party affiliation.

"The current system is rigged for the people who created the system," Woods,
a Republican, said Thursday as backers filed 230,000 petition signatures.

"The big loser is the average person who is not on the extreme right or the
extreme left, who finds himself shut out," he said.

But Mike Hellon, chairman of the Arizona Republican Party, said the
initiative would "wreak havoc on Arizona's electoral process and double
costs of elections. Candidates will be forced to raise more campaign funds,
empowering special-interest groups to a greater degree."

Hellon urged voters instead to support the Legislature's open-primary
measure, which would allow voters registered as independents, those with no
party preference or those from minor parties not represented on the ballot
to vote in a primary election of their choice.

Johnson said that by placing the two competing measures on the ballot,
lawmakers are trying to confuse voters so that neither side's proposals will
pass.

"What they want to do is split the 'yes' votes," he said. "Hopefully, the
public will recognize what they are trying to do."

Checked-by: "Rolf Ernst"