Judge upholds statute on petitions

U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle suffered a mild setback Wednesday in her effort to make Nevada ballot initiative laws more user friendly when a federal judge determined a statute regarding signature petitions is constitutional.

But the court hearing wasn't a total loss for the Republican candidate. U.S. District Judge James C. Mahan also ordered Secretary of State Ross Miller to remove a provision that requires petition circulators to swear under oath the signatories are legally registered voters.

"These things always come up this time of year," said Mahan, who has ruled on previous Nevada ballot questions and who shot down a rule five years ago that required signatures to be collected in only 13 of the state's 17 counties to qualify for the ballot. "I think that was the marijuana people," he recounted.

The two issues in Angle's case are the "all districts rule" and a requirement that petition circulators swear under oath that the signers are legally registered voters.

The first issue was the most important to Angle's attorney, Kermitt Waters, and Deputy Attorney General Kerry Benson, who represents Miller.

The all districts rule came about in 2007 and requires petitioners to collect signatures from at least 10 percent of voters who participated in the previous election in each of Nevada's three congressional districts. Two of those districts, I and III, are located entirely within Clark County, by far the state's most populous county. District II includes a sliver of northern Clark County with the remainder of Nevada.

The districts each contain, at least in theory, one-third of the state's population.

Early in the hearing Mahan said he was inclined to uphold the rule "because it is based on population" and because of the well-established equal protection doctrine of one person, one vote.

Waters said the issue is one of fairness, contending the flurry of changes the Legislature has made to the initiative process in recent years had one purpose in mind: To make it too difficult to get a question on the ballot.

"The argument is that 25 percent of the people of this state can overrule 75 percent of the state," he said, adding that those 25 percent live in rural Nevada.

He cited the Southern Nevada Water Authority's plan to pump groundwater from eastern Nevada's White Pine County. Waters said it was easy to think enough Clark County residents would sign a petition to pump the water, but rural Nevadans probably wouldn't.

Waters also argued the Legislature has made it too expensive and logistically overwhelming to mount a successful initiative campaign because people would have to travel about the state to gather sufficient signatures.

That Nevada is one of only three states in the union that gives corporations standing to challenge initiatives is also troubling to Waters, who accused gaming and mining, Nevada's two primary industries, of shutting down any attempt by citizens to implement new laws. "Mining and gaming own the Legislature," said Waters in an interview Tuesday prior to the hearing.

Mahan rejected the oath provision because, he said, the administrative requirement that circulators sign a sworn affidavit attesting each signature is valid is a rule that "goes beyond" what is written in the statute. Mahan, however, stopped short of saying it was unconstitutional.

Waters is not done. A third issue regarding Nevada ballot initiatives -- that proponents stick to a single subject and limit their explanation to 200 words -- is under review by the 9th U.S. Court of Appeals. Nevada is one of 24 states that give citizens the right to enact laws through ballot initiatives or repeal them through referenda.

Contact Doug McMurdo at dmcmurdo@reviewjournal.com or 702-224-5512 or read more courts coverage at lvlegalnews.com.