Secretary of State’s Office certifies Prop. 207 and Prop. 208 for the November 3, 2020 General Election

PHOENIX – The Secretary of State’s Office has completed statewide initiative petition processing for this election cycle and certified the following initiatives that will appear on the November 3, 2020 General Election ballot:

Proposition 207: The Smart and Safe Arizona Act

DESCRIPTIVE TITLE: The law would allow limited marijuana possession, use, and cultivation by adults 21 or older; amend criminal penalties for marijuana possession; ban smoking marijuana in public; impose a 16% excise tax on marijuana sales to fund public programs; authorize state/local regulation of marijuana licensees; and allow expungement of marijuana offenses.

Proposition 208: The Invest in Education Act

DESCRIPTIVE TITLE: The law would impose a 3.5% tax surcharge on taxable annual income over $250,000 for single persons or married persons filing separately, or $500,000 for married persons filing jointly or heads of households, to increase funding for public education.

The Secretary of State’s Office reviewed over 145,000 initiative petition sheets, containing over 2.1 million signature lines, pursuant to A.R.S. § 19-121.01, and then sent a 5% random sample of the accepted signatures for each initiative to the counties for verification. The county recorders completed their signature verification and returned the certification report to the Secretary of State’s Office. Upon receipt of each county’s certification report for an initiative, the Secretary of State’s Office calculated the sample’s validity rate, which was used to project whether the initiative contained sufficient valid signatures. Prop. 207 and 208 met the constitutionally required minimum signature threshold, survived court challenges, and were certified for the General Election ballot.

“Direct democracy has been a fixture in Arizona’s constitution since its entry into the Union in 1912. I want to take this opportunity to commend my staff, and the county recorders and their teams, who tackled this massive endeavor by working day and night processing and scanning petition sheets, reviewing signatures, coordinating regarding sample verification, issuing certifications, and handling the court challenges, in order to facilitate the exercise of this constitutional right,” Secretary Katie Hobbs said.

For more information on the 2020 initiative filings, visit https://azsos.gov/elections/initiative-referendum-and-recall.

-30-