This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The Utah Legislature's frenzied attempts to throttle ballot initiatives have been aimed at citizen groups usually wanting more ethics oversight and accountability of lawmakers.
But casting a wide net sometimes creates unintended victims, like a group pushing reform most legislators agree with.
Longtime candidate and political activist Merrill Cook will appear Monday at the Utah Supreme Court to argue that laws making it more difficult to get an initiative on the ballot have violated the rights of his group, which wants to punish business owners who hire undocumented immigrants.
If you listen to the rhetoric on Capitol Hill, most Republican legislators agree. But their passage of bills governing the ballot initiatives effectively killed Cook's petition drive this year.
Cook and his group, Citizens Alliance to Secure Utah's Prosperity (CATSUP), circulated a petition in Salt Lake County to get an initiative on the ballot that would require businesses to use e-verify when hiring.
It also would allow the county to yank business licenses of employers who knowingly hired undocumented immigrants.
But the drive fell 4,000 signatures short of the 36,000 required to get the initiative on the ballot.
Cook, a non-lawyer who plans to argue pro se at the Supreme Court on Monday, says laws the Legislature passed in 2008 and 2011 made it virtually impossible for his group to get the signatures it needed.
The 2008 law changes the deadline from 120 days before the election, which would be early July, to April 15.
The 2011 law, passed while Cook was rallying support for his initiative, created a start date, requiring signatures be gathered within 316 days of the date the drive officially begins or by April 15, whichever comes first.
By moving the deadline from July to April, said Cook, it made it more difficult for petitioners to stand outside to get signatures because it was being done mostly in the winter months. The old deadline allowed for at least two good months of warm weather.
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Cook and his merry petitioners • This isn't the first time the conservative Cook — who has run for public office 11 times — has ruffled the feathers of Republican colleagues.
He got a statewide initiative on the ballot in 1990 to eliminate sales tax on food, but it failed to pass. He launched a petition drive in 1994 to impose term limits on elected officials, but the Legislature neutered that attempt by passing a term-limits law in the 1994 general session.
Lawmakers then slyly repealed that law in 2006, just before the 12-year limit would have gone into effect and forced several legislators to retire.
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Where's Ralph? • Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker says on his Web page that he wants to hear from you. He invites citizens to call him at 801-535-7174.
But when you do, you never get a live person, and you can't leave a message.