Four new statewide ballot measures were certified for 2019 and 2020 ballots in the past 30 days.
Three statewide measures were certified for 2019 in Maine, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Here’s what they would do:
- Maine: allow legislation to let persons with physical disabilities that prevent them from signing their own names use an alternative signature to sign petitions for citizen-initiated ballot measures.
- New Jersey: extend an existing $250 property tax deduction that veterans receive to continuing care retirement centers on behalf of the veterans living there, and require retirement centers to pass the value of the deduction on to veterans in the form of credits or payments.
- Pennsylvania: add specific rights of crime victims, together known as a Marsy’s Law, to the Pennsylvania Constitution.
A 2020 measure to establish the authority of state and local governments to pass campaign finance laws was certified in Oregon.
All four statewide measures certified in the past month were proposed constitutional amendments referred to the ballot by state legislatures.
Proponents of a citizen-initiated constitutional amendment in Florida designed to state that only citizens of the United States are qualified electors announced that they had collected 1.5 million signatures seeking to qualify their measure for the 2020 ballot; they need to submit 766,200 valid signatures and have them verified prior to a deadline on February 1, 2020.
Proponents of a 2019 sanctuary city measure in Tucson also submitted signatures for their initiative.