OPINION: This bill is a referendum slayer
House Bill 652, which is designed to critically wound citizen initiatives in Idaho, will also administer an absolute kill shot to the citizen referendum.
For those not familiar with the referendum, it is an infrequently-used mechanism that allows voters to veto a bill enacted into law by the Legislature. Voters can make a law with the initiative or use the referendum to veto a law passed by the Legislature.
The reason that the people rarely use the referendum is that the Legislature has set timelines that are nearly impossible to meet. Referendum petitions with the required number of signatures must be submitted to the Secretary of State no later than 60 days after adjournment of the legislative session in which the bill they want to veto is passed. Most of those 60 days would be spent trying to fulfill bureaucratic requirements before signature gathering could actually commence.
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