Who Gets to Pull a Petition Back?

Who is a referendum petition for? The Arizona Constitution reserves the referendum to the voters of every city and town. Ten percent of the electors can propose one. The people who sign are voters using a power the constitution gave them, asking for a public vote on something their council already passed.

HB2873 changed who controlled that petition after it was filed. It said a person or organization that files a referendum petition with a city or town clerk may withdraw it by filing a written notice, at any time before the measure qualifies for the ballot. Picture a letter signed by thousands of neighbors and handed to the clerk by one of them. This bill lets that one person take the letter back.

The text never asks the people who signed. It has no step that tells them, and none that requires their consent. If the petition ends, the path to a vote on that measure ends with it. That last point is our reading of the bill. It depends on how Arizona's ballot qualification statute treats a withdrawn petition, and we did not review that statute. On the text as written, the voters who signed would lose the vote they asked for.

Then the bill went further. Section 3 applied the new rule backward to every withdrawal notice filed after December 31, 2025, even if a clerk had already rejected the notice. It also said votes on any city or town referendum with a withdrawal notice on file "may not be tallied or canvassed." Read that one slowly. A vote could reach the ballot and go uncounted.

Here is where the bill came from. HB2873 was introduced as a state procurement bill about competitive sealed bidding. The House passed that version 37 to 16 on February 26. In the Senate, a committee amendment struck everything after the enacting clause and inserted the referendum text. Floor amendments by Senator Bolick added an emergency clause and a repeal date of July 31, 2027. The Senate passed the rewritten bill 20 to 9 on April 21. The House final vote failed 27 to 24, then passed 31 to 27 after reconsideration on June 11.

Does the bill connect to a real dispute? The text never names a city. Public records from the Town of Marana describe a case that fits its dates.

On February 4, Marana's clerk issued receipts for two referendum petitions against the rezoning of two properties for a proposed data center. Each carried about 2,800 signatures. They came from a committee called Arizonans for Responsible Development, sponsored by the organization Worker Power. On February 17, the committee's attorney wrote the town to withdraw them and retract the signatures. The letter says the committee "no longer supports placing these measures on the ballot." It argues that the committee that files a petition may withdraw it. The letter comes from the committee's attorney. It does not say that any signer asked for the withdrawal.

Marana answered that it has no statutory authority to withdraw a petition once it is filed. The clerk then found that the petitions left out the legal description of the properties that zoning referendums require, so the signatures would not be verified. The Town says that decision rested only on the statute and was not influenced by the withdrawal request.

Local news reports the rest. A subsidiary of the developer, Fremont Peak Properties, sued to make the town accept the withdrawal. Residents sued over the rejection. Reporting from AZPM says a Pima County judge ruled in early May that the law does not permit withdrawal once petitions are filed, and denied the request to compel the town. We have not seen the court order itself.

Line the dates up. Section 3 reaches every withdrawal notice filed after December 31, 2025. A notice filed February 17 falls inside that window. AZPM reported on April 23 that quick passage could have removed the need for an April 27 hearing in that case. The senators who spoke disagreed on motive. Sen. Sundareshan tied the emergency clause to Marana. Sen. Finchem said the bill was not about data centers. The official explanation of the amendment that added the emergency clause says one thing: "Adds an emergency clause." We found no statement from the amendment's author on why.

What holds up: the dates fit, and the text reaches a withdrawal like that one. What we cannot say: why the amendment was written this way. The record has no answer.

Governor Hobbs vetoed it on June 19. Her letter to Speaker Montenegro gives one sentence of reasoning: she vetoed it "because it would introduce uncertainty and confusion into ongoing litigation on the subject matter." The letter names no case, party, city or town. A court case on this exact question was moving through Pima County while the bill moved through the Legislature.

Is there a fair case for the bill? Yes. A person who starts a petition can reasonably want to end it, and a clear withdrawal procedure has merit. Applied going forward, that piece could be defended under the constitution's language letting the legislature pass general laws on petition procedure. The retroactive reach and the count ban are the pieces that carry the weight. They reach referendum matters already in progress and decide whether a vote counts. And the signers, who did the asking, have no role in the text.

Our read is that the Governor's stated reason and the voter concern are two separate questions. Her letter rests on pending litigation. The concern here rests on the referendum power the constitution reserves to voters. If a version of this bill returns, read the effective date and the vote-count language first.

This is our read of the bill. We encourage you to read it yourself and reach your own conclusions. The sources are public and cited below.