Senate committee advances petition-process overhaul, raises signature-fraud penalty to a felony

A Senate committee on Thursday voted to report a bill changing how citizen-initiative petitions are handled, including moving certification of ballot titles to the State Board of Election Commissioners and elevating certain intentional signature-collection misconduct from a misdemeanor to a class D felony.

Sponsor Senator Pitch told the committee the measure aligns statute with Article 5, Section 1 of the state constitution and "documents" current collection practices while altering penalties. "We made that a class D felony," the sponsor said, pointing committee members to the bill text (page 1, line 26) and to signature-collection directives later in the draft (page 12and 13).

The bill removes the attorney generals routine, front-end review of ballot titles and establishes that ballot titles and "popular name" certification will be handled by the State Board of Election Commissioners rather than by a separate AG review process. Senator Pitch said the change…