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Voters in Colorado will get a chance to define what a "person" is next month. Voters in Missouri will decide whether to limit taxes.
Voters in Oklahoma will consider changing how their schools are funded.
Those issues are on the ballot because citizens bypassed lawmakers and signed petitions to put them there.
That's not allowed in Kansas now. Republican Kris Kobach wants to offer that idea if he's elected secretary of state.
Twenty-four states allow citizen petitions, including the four that border Kansas. Measures on the 2010 ballot around the country offer a smorgasbord of issues ranging from the living conditions of farm animals to efforts to legalize marijuana and rein in taxes.
Taxes are the top target of citizen initiatives, said John Matsusaka, business and law professor at the University of Southern California, who heads the school's Initiative & Referendum Institute.
"States with initiatives spend and tax less than states without them," he said.
Though petitions would allow citizens to propose laws without going through the legislature, Kansas lawmakers would have to clear the way for the initiative process here.
A two-thirds majority in both chambers would be required to adopt a constitutional amendment allowing initiatives. It then would go before voters statewide.
Legislative leaders doubt that will happen soon. The idea has been suggested and rejected in Kansas in the past, and plenty of opposition remains — including from Democratic Secretary of State Chris Biggs, who is seeking re-election.
Kobach acknowledges the opposition but says he would offer guidance if lawmakers are interested.
"There are many different types of initiative systems around the country," he said. "I would try to make sure Kansas develops a system that is not abused by fringe groups and a system that works well."
Pros, cons
Proponents of voter initiatives believe they offer citizens a chance to participate directly in the democratic process, particularly when citizens feel their legislatures are out of sync with their wishes.
Critics contend that initiatives clear the way for wealthy special-interest groups to come into a state and influence its laws; that they are used to lure certain voters with hot-button issues like immigration and abortion; that they are costly, and that they are frequently tied up in lawsuits.
Like democracy itself, voter initiatives are far from perfect, Matsusaka said.
But, he added, "It's a safety valve for people out of power to float their ideas to see if they can find an audience for them."
Although it's true that special interests can come into a state and spend heavily on a measure, that doesn't necessarily mean it will pass, he said. Businesses that outspend opponents 10 to 1 or even 100 to 1 often see their propositions fail at the polls.
"You can't buy laws. Voters aren't that silly," Matsusaka said. "Organized wealthy groups will be able to use the process more than disorganized poor groups, but that's also true in the legislature."
Bordering states
In Missouri this fall, voters will deal with several tax initiatives.
One seeks to prevent the state, counties and other political subdivisions from imposing any new tax, including a sales tax, on the sale or transfer of homes and other real estate.
Another would remove the ability of cities to fund their budgets through earnings taxes, a 1 percent tax levied against employee gross compensation and business net profits. It would allow voters in cities that already have earnings taxes to vote whether to continue them.
But Missouri also offers an example of the pitfalls of voter initiatives.
Lawsuits are commonplace. Opponents often sue the secretary of state, state auditor and attorney general over the ballot titles, ballot wording and auditor estimates of the projected costs to the state and other entities.
Since 2008, the state has received 101 ballot initiative petitions, according to the Missouri Secretary of State's Office. Forty-four were approved for circulation, and 28 of those were tied up court. Only three made it to the November ballot.
Petitions for constitutional questions in Missouri need signatures from at least 8 percent of the voter turnout in the previous gubernatorial election, or about 150,000 signatures, according to the secretary of state's office. Statutory laws require 5 percent.
Legislators often try to limit citizen initiatives because they are direct challenges to their power, Matsusaka said.
Lawmakers in Missouri sought unsuccessfully this year to nearly double the number of signatures needed and to require that people who gather signatures be residents of the state.
In Colorado, lawmakers last year passed bills requiring petition circulators to be state residents and requiring that they charge an hourly rate to gather signatures rather than a fee per signature, which, lawmakers contended, invites fraud. Both changes were successfully challenged in federal court.
Other states
Colorado will have five citizen-initiated measures on the ballot next month.
They include an anti-abortion measure amending the state constitution to apply the term "person" to "every human being from the beginning of the biological development of that human being."
They also include measures aimed at lowering property taxes and prohibiting state borrowing.
Propositions brought by lawmakers also will be on the ballot.
And all those propositions will take up a lot of space.
"It's not uncommon for Colorado counties to have a two-page ballot, which adds postage, paper costs and ink costs for the counties," said Rich Coolidge, communications director for the Colorado Secretary of State's Office.
The costs of verifying signatures is another concern to any state considering citizen ballot petitions, he said. The office's annual budget for initiatives is about $200,000.
Lawmakers in Colorado, among the top five states in the nation for the number of initiatives between 1904 and 2009, have been debating whether to make it more difficult for voters to change the constitution, Coolidge said.
"We have a fairly lengthy constitution dealing with everything from spring bear hunts to ethics," he said.
In Oklahoma, citizen petitions largely have been workable for the state, said Oklahoma Secretary of State Susan Savage.
Oklahoma has passed some high-profile citizen measures, including one banning cock fighting and another allowing liquor by the drink, she said.
But these days, many proposals come from state legislators after the governor has vetoed a law, she said.
"You typically have legislative referendums being used, it seems to me, in lieu of the legislative process," Savage said.
And like other states, she said, "We are all seeing, like political campaigns, efforts to use the process by those from outside the state to make policy changes in the state."
Opponents of citizen petitions say they can be abused by frivolous measures. But the work and costs required to gather the appropriate number of signatures helps limit such measures, Matsusaka said. Furthermore, what constitutes a "frivolous" measure is highly subjective, he said.
A recent measure in Florida was aimed at guaranteeing pregnant pigs a certain amount of living space, Matsusaka said.
"To a lot of people, that's a very serious issue," he said.
Biggs weighs in
Biggs, Kobach's opponent in November, said the state should be wary of voter initiatives.
"We should proceed with tremendous caution because there are many issues about the ballot initiative concept that are problematic," he said.
Biggs cites the costs of the measures as a top worry.
"If we have a ballot go over to an extra page even, it's a great concern to our local clerks because of the cost of ballots," Biggs said. "We could very easily run into a circumstance where we have a number of issues on the ballot that could greatly increase the costs of elections at the local level."
Public notification would probably be required, and that would be costly as well, he said. It is costing the state between $250,000 and $500,000 to notify the public about two constitutional amendments placed on the November ballot by the legislature (those concern the right to bear arms and the right of the mentally ill to vote).
Biggs also said he was concerned about the potential for abuse by out-of-state interest groups, citing the potential threat to the state's agriculture industry from animal rights groups.
Allie Devine, lobbyist and general counsel for the Kansas Livestock Association, which opposes citizen initiatives, said a 2008 proposition in California that eliminated poultry cages for egg-laying hens drove the poultry industry out of the state.
"While we never condone abuses of animals, we think that initiatives and referendums can be used to further agendas that may be contrary to traditional agricultural practices," she said.
Odds are . . .
Citizen ballot petitions face long odds in Kansas.
Lawmakers rejected former Gov. Joan Finney's attempts for a constitutional amendment to allow them in the early 1990s. Senate president Steve Morris, R-Hugoton, who hates the idea, said he doesn't think Kobach's proposal will pass in the current legislature.
"Most of the people I've talked to had the same reaction: They couldn't think of a worse idea," he said.
"I think a two-thirds vote would make it very difficult," Morris said.
House speaker Mike O'Neal, R-Hutchinson, said the issue isn't on the House's agenda and he hasn't heard much talk about it. He is against it.
"It's a populist idea that, when people hear it, it sounds really good," he said.
But initiatives can hamstring representative government, and nationwide they haven't been a great benefit, he said.
Kobach is aware his proposal is unlikely to pass anytime soon.
"But it may become more likely after this election and after the 2012 election as more legislators become keenly responsive to the will of the people," he said.
