By Zachary Gorchow
Executive Editor and Publisher
Posted: July 16, 2015 11:38 AM

With conservatives turning more and more to the voter-initiated act process as a way of enacting new laws that Governor Rick Snyder opposes, increasingly I wonder what the framers of the 1963 Michigan Constitution were thinking.

In the past, the use of the initiated act process was relatively rare. Now, it’s frequent – laws barring insurance plans from covering abortions without a separate rider and assuring wolf hunting were enacted this way, and a prevailing wage repeal could happen as well. I can’t help but wonder if Mr. Snyder’s continued veto threats of a Religious Freedom Restoration Act could prompt another petition drive on that topic.

The process allows a group to put a law before the Legislature if it can gather a minimum of signatures from registered voters equal to 8 percent of the total vote for governor in the last gubernatorial election.

With enough signatures, the Legislature can enact the law with affirmative votes in both houses. Inaction, or defeat of the measure, means it goes on the next November ballot of an even-numbered year for voters to decide. It is the ability of the Legislature to enact the law that I find puzzling.

Democracy in action, right? A mechanism to allow the people to work directly with their elected representatives to pass a law over the governor’s opposition, right?

Here is what I don’t get, and to be clear, this has nothing to do with the philosophical nature of the recently enacted initiated acts.

The framers of the Constitution essentially made 8 percent of vote for governor equal in power to the governor.

Put another way, the Constitution makes 252,523 voters (8 percent of last year’s total vote for governor) just as powerful as the 1,479,058 voters Mr. Snyder needed to beat Mark Schauer last year (Mr. Snyder received 1,607,399 votes and Mr. Schauer 1,479,057).

Maybe the abacuses available during the last Constitutional Convention in 1961-62 got stuck or something.