Go ahead and sign boundaries, ethics petitions

It's one week before the April 15 deadline faced by supporters of citizen initiative petitions.

By next Thursday evening, they will have to hand in 95,000 voter signatures statewide, with 10 percent in each of 26 of 29 state Senate districts.

It's a tough goal to reach.

Legislators — especially Republican lawmakers — generally don't like citizen initiatives.

They like to point out that Utah is a republican form of government (small R), and that residents elect people to represent them in the state House and Senate.

Lawmakers have time, interest and energy to delve into complicated issues, thus making for informed and rational lawmaking and policy setting, they say.

Of course, with that elitism can come arrogance, as when some GOP senators criticized this year's petition volunteers as "hucksters" who routinely deceive potential signees in grocery store parking lots, telling them all kinds of bad stuff about legislators to get them to sign.

The fact that petition volunteers and signees are the same people who elect legislators seems not to be noticed by some GOP lawmakers.

But the drafters of the Utah Constitution — which guarantees residents the right to change and adopt state law through initiative petition — got it right.

When legislators refuse to listen to residents on an issue, residents need recourse outside of just booting legislators from office.

(Considering that around 90 percent of incumbent legislators win re-election, defeating an incumbent is very difficult.)

And it's important to remember that should you sign one of the petitions, you are only asking that the issue be put before voters in November. It doesn't mean you necessarily support the initiative or that it will be approved by the general electorate.

Should you sign the Fair Boundaries and Utahns for Ethical Government petitions?

Yes.

Remember, this only puts the initiatives before voters. And if voters are smart enough to vote for a governor, Utah House and Senate member, then they are smart enough to vote on these initiatives.

Do the initiatives have some problems?

Yes.