A measure to change rules for qualifying questions for the Nevada ballot underwent a last-minute rewrite Saturday in a key state Senate committee to overcome criticism that it had fatal constitutional flaws.
Lee Rowland of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada said SB212, introduced by Sen. Dean Rhoads, R-Tuscarora, was improved by the Senate Finance Committee amendments. But Rowland added that questions remain over future rules since key provisions of the bill would expire in mid-2011.
As it stands now, the revised version of SB212 calls for a minimum number of signatures to be collected in each of Nevada's four congressional districts by groups trying to qualify questions for the ballot.
The congressional district standard has passed constitutional muster in recent court rulings because such districts tend to have roughly equal numbers of voters.
The original wording of SB212 called for petition-circulators to get signatures amounting to at least 10 percent of the voters who cast ballots in each of Nevada's 42 state Assembly districts in the preceding election " a plan that was challenged on constitutional grounds.
Lawmakers also discussed using Nevada's higher education system regent districts for the ballot question rules, but the ACLU noted that there are widely varying numbers of voters in both the Assembly and regent districts and that also would lead to court challenges.
The latest efforts by lawmakers follow a U.S. District Court judge's ruling last year tossing out Nevada's initiative petition requirements that sought to compensate for different population sizes in urban and rural counties.
The ruling struck down rules approved by the 2007 Legislature that forced petition-gatherers to get signatures from 10 percent of the voters in each county rather than 10 percent statewide.
The ACLU had challenged the 2007 law changes as no better than another initiative petition law struck down by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
The ACLU, along with the Marijuana Policy Project, complained that the 2007 law gave signatures from rural voters more power than those of urban voters. For example, if voters in one county were overwhelmingly against a certain petition, it could be kept off the ballot even if enough voters from other counties supported it.