Looking locally
Will lowering the signature requirement for Iowa City initiatives and referendums lead to California-style government by the people?
By Fred Boehmke
This October and November, voters in Iowa City will have the opportunity to vote on a ballot measure to reduce the number of signatures required to qualify an initiative or referendum for the ballot. Ballot measure C would change the city charter to require signatures equal to or greater than 10 percent of the number that voted in the previous city election and no fewer than ten signatures. The current rules require signature totaling at least 25 percent of turnout in the previous election and no fewer than 3,600 signatures. This was just changed in April 2015 when the City Council voted to increase the minimum from 2,500 to 3,600 but allow signatures from all eligible rather than just registered voters.
The proposed change would bring the signature threshold for passing new measures via initiatives or overturning measures passed by the council via referendums in line with the requirements for amending the city charter, which requires 10 percent and no fewer than 10 signatures. There are still limitations on which areas can be modified via initiative or referendum — citizens still can not change the budget or tax levies, for example — and any proposal must be of a legislative and not an administrative nature.
What would this mean in practice? Since 6,865 people voted in the November 2015 Iowa City election, the number of required signatures would have dropped from 3,600 (since 25 percent of 6,865 is less than 3,600) to 687. That’s a big change given all the time that goes into collecting signatures. In previous years the numbers would be larger, since 2015 was a relatively low turnout election. On four occasions since the turn of the century, turnout exceeded 10,000 voters, reaching 15,728 in 2007 with one of over-21 measures on the ballot that year. Petitions seeking to qualify during that cycle would have required almost 4,000 signatures under the current rules and 1,572 under the proposed new rule. In both cases, then, the new rules lead to a very large drop in the number of signatures required.
What would happen if Measure C passed? Let’s turn to the states for some hints. Just shy of half the American states allow for some form of initiative to propose new laws. Research by myself and others shows that the rules governing ballot access matter a lot in determining the number of ballot measures that appear each cycle. In addition to signature thresholds, states also set distribution requirements and limit the number of days a petition can circulate. An analysis I did in 2004 of the number of statewide initiatives between 1976–2000 shows that a typical state with a 5 percent signature threshold would expect to have 4.75 initiatives every two years while the same state with a 10 percent requirement would have 2 measures. That’s a difference of nearly three measures every two years. A more recent analysis from 2015 covering the period 1994–2008 shows a similar, though slightly smaller, effect. What does this mean for Iowa City? Well, there are no states with a 25 percent signature requirement and states are a lot bigger so it’s still a lot of signatures even in Wyoming (28,624 as of 2012). But extrapolating the state results suggests we see about one more measure per year. That would represent a more than doubling of the current rate, but is still not exactly an explosion. What else might happen? Lots of research, including by myself and my colleague Caroline Tolbert, shows that more initiatives leads to greater turnout, especially in lower turnout elections. It’s not a coincidence that the highest turnout rates in recent Iowa City city elections correspond to high profile measures: the over 21 vote in 2007 and two measures related to electric light and power plant city utility in 2005.
Finally, let’s consider what might happen on Election Day. The results of a University of Iowa Hawkeye Poll conducted in April 2015 during the charter reform period showed widespread support for expanding the requirement to include eligible rather than just registered voters, with a two to one margin favoring expansion.[1] Further, nearly two-thirds of respondents preferred to keep the minimum at 2,500 rather than 3,600. We don’t know if they would have supported lowering it to 10 percent, but it’s clear that voters prefer keeping it lower than 3,600.
So, in sum, it seems that if Measure C passes, we’ll have a modest increase in the number of ballot measures that appear on Iowa City ballots in the future. But not too many more. And given subject restrictions, it seems unlikely that we’ll end up with a local government excessively constrained by citizen-initiated and passed measures. But we might anticipate a slight increase in turnout and participation.
[1] https://clas.uiowa.edu/polisci/research/hawkeye-poll.
Fred Boehmke is Director of the Iowa Social Science Research Center, Public Policy Center researcher in the Politics and Policy Research Program and Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa. Boehmke’s research focuses on the diffusion of public policies across the American states and on the consequences of direct democracy on state politics. Learn more about Boehmke and his research here. Want to learn more about Boehmke’s research on initiatives and state government? Read this.
