Some Laws Take Effect Friday, HB 2305 Not Included

September 13, 2013

Not sure if this officially counts as a holiday in state government wonk-ville, but Friday is the General Effective Date, the day on which most bills signed during the legislative session become law. Hank Stephenson, a reporter for the Arizona Capitol Times, gives a sense of what some of those new laws are, but first, let’s do the numbers on this year’s bills.

One of the laws that did not take effect Friday is House Bill 2305. It contains a whole host of changes to Arizona’s election law, including procedures for removing voters from the Permanent Early Voting List and increasing the number of signatures third-party candidates need to collect to get on the ballot. 

The Protect Your Right to Vote Committee this week turned in around 146,000 signatures against the new law. If at least 86,405 of those are deemed valid, the law will be put on hold until voters decide its fate in the November 2014 election.

Julie Erfle is the chair of the Protect Your Right to Vote Committee. Assuming the law gets on the ballot, Erfle’s group will not be alone in talking about it. There are two groups that have formed to defend the law.

State Sen. Michele Reagan chairs one of them. She also leads the Senate’s Elections Committee and is exploring a run for secretary of state. She said there is a lot to like in the law.  Reagan said if there are enough valid signatures to put the law on next year’s ballot, she expects to try to work on the measure during the upcoming legislative session to resolve concerns about it.