AZ High court to hear immigration ballot measure

High court to hear immigration ballot measure

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ ... n1226.html

Monica Alonzo-Dunsmoor
The Arizona Republic
Dec. 26, 2006 12:00 AM

The Arizona Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments next month on whether an immigration-enforcement initiative proposed in Phoenix should go before voters.

Randy Pullen, chairman of Protect Our City, is pushing a proposition to require Phoenix police officers to enforce federal immigration laws.

The case goes before the Supreme Court on Jan. 11.
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"I'm very confident that we'll be successful," Pullen said.

And if they aren't: "I'm prepared to go out and collect the signatures again."

Daniel Ortega, an attorney representing the individuals who challenged Pullen's signatures, is equally confident that the Supreme Court will uphold the ruling of a Maricopa County Superior Court judge, who tossed out many of the signatures Pullen collected.

That ruling in September forced the measure off the November ballot. The judge said a city charter rule gives proposition proponents an extra 10 days to gather signatures if they come up short when they first submit petition conflicts with state law.

State law allows one shot at gathering signatures.

Initially, Pullen came up more than 600 signatures short of qualifying for the Phoenix ballot. Using the extra time, he gathered 15,052 signatures, more than the 14,844 required to get the proposition before voters.

Something like this shouldn't have to go before the voters on a ballet. The elected officials in the statehouse should be protecting their citizens but are not.