ND Senate Says Petition Circulators Must Be Citizens For Two Years First

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Written By:
Rob Port

Feb 25, 2013
5:50pm

We all remember the scandal last year around two initiated measures that were kept off the statewide ballot by petition fraud committed by a group of NDSU football players. That has inspired a number of proposals for reforming the initiated measure process, including SB2183 which got a vote in the Senate today.

Here’s the floor debate, it passed by a 31-16 vote.

The bill is pretty straight forward. If it becomes law, you would have to be a qualified elector (18 years old) and a citizen of the state for two years before you could circulate a petition.

Which means, essentially, that out-of-state groups couldn’t fly in armies of petitioners to get an issue on the ballot.

Given the problems we’ve had with initiated measures in the state, this seems like a common sense reform.