Both the outgoing governor, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary-nominee Janet Napolitano, and her successor, Jan Brewer, have called for major reform of the state's initiative process. So has the Arizona Republic, in this recent editorial.  It's hard to blame them. Arizona saw perhaps unprecedented signature fraud last year. A typical validity rate for signatures collected in an initiative campaign is 70 percent. But multiple measures last year had validity rates of less than 50 percent. That's strong evidence of institutional, across-the-board fraud.

In drafting ballot initiatives, sponsors often face a choice. They can give their measure a better chance of winning by making it vague. A specific provision is easier to attack. But vague provisions often provoke legal challenges that block successful initiatives from taking effect. Such may be the case with Arizona's Prop 101, the ballot initiative designed to prevent the sort of health care reforms passed in Massachusetts and pursued in California. (Speciifically, the initiative bans the state from requiring people to get health care coverage, and would seem to bar a single-payer system). In this Arizona Republic story on the measure, critics suggest the initiative is so ambiguous that its real meaning might be decided in the courts.

And now the head of the state's indigent care system suggests the initiative, if passed, would force his department to close.