Free the petitions!

CARSON CITY

Political language, Orwell said, is designed to make lies sound truthful. But sometimes, even the best political wordsmith can’t get the job done.

Take Senate Bill 434, a bill aimed at reforming the initiative petition process. It passed out of the state Senate on a 12-9 vote with bipartisan opposition on Friday.

The legislative bill drafter gamely tries to assert that the Legislature has enacted provisions intended to “facilitate the efficiency, veracity and clarity” of petitions laid before the voters. Of course, the rules are intended to have the opposite effect, being cumbersome burdens to the right of the people to amend their constitution or state law books.

(It should be noted initiative petitions and constitutional amendments are not, strictly speaking, examples of the First Amendment right of the people to petition their government for the redress of grievances. Rather, initiatives are the people acting directly in their legislative capacity.)

According to SB434, the Supreme Court has upheld initiative rules because they support the state’s interests in protecting against fraud, subterfuge, misunderstanding, mischief and abuse, all of which are words that could be applied to the rules placed in the way of citizens trying to make laws the way they did it back in the progressive era.

SB434 enacts new provisions that are intended to facilitate — what’s that phrase? — the efficiency, veracity and clarity of petitions. And the new rules discourage “frivolous, spurious, vexatious, or harassing petitions that unnecessarily consume public and private resources and cause disorder, inefficiency, unfairness and waste.”

You know how that messy direct democracy raises the ire of duly elected lawmakers and the business interests who spend a lot of time and money lobbying them in the comfy confines of the Legislative Building. How dare citizen interlopers vex them with their own ideas!

That’s why the new rules are so fun.

First, you have to submit your idea for a new law or constitutional amendment to the secretary of state’s office, and then get 1,000 signatures to show your idea has at least some basic support. And who — except maybe the people who tried to recall Speaker John Hambrick from the Assembly — couldn’t get that? But, essentially, this means you have to get signatures on a petition in order to file a petition.

Second, when you submit that petition and your 1,000 signatures, you also file a summary of your initiative, known as a “description of effect.” This wording will appear on the final documents that you’ll ask people to sign outside the grocery store or the DMV. But before you get to go ask for your signatures, your opponents get a chance to re-write your summary.

That’s right: Any critic can file an objection with the secretary of state’s office, which triggers a five-day period in which you have to sit down and see if you can hammer out mutually agreeable language. If you can’t, then the state sues you and your petition goes to court, where a judge gets to either approve your summary or write one of his own.

Third, there’s also a provision that allows critics to get a quick court hearing if they claim your petition violates the infamous single-subject rule, which limits petitions to addressing only one issue at a time. But the bill changes things a little: In some cases in the past, if courts have found an initiative violates the single-subject rule, judges have edited out some provisions but let the rest go forward. Under this bill, the violation would kill the initiative.

Initiatives surely aren’t the best way to make law; as flawed as it is, the legislative process — where bills are debated and amended by the people’s chosen representatives — works best. But when lawmakers fail to act, the citizens should be able to make law. And the Legislature shouldn’t make that process any harder than it already is.

Steve Sebelius is a Las Vegas Review-Journal political columnist who blogs at SlashPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter (@SteveSebelius) or reach him at 702-387-5276 or ssebelius@reviewjournal.com.