From the Ada Evening News:

On Thursday, the Oklahomans for Initiative Rights came through Ada on a state-wide tour to promote House Bill 2246.

“HB 2246 will reform Oklahoma’s hardest-in-the-nation ballot initiative and referendum process,” a press release by the Oklahomans for Initiative Rights said. “If passed, it will extend the amount of time to collect signatures from 90 days, as is allowed under current law, to one year.”

The initiative and referendum process allows grassroots efforts to petition and have a say in the legislation that appears before their state representatives.

“It (HB 2246) going to change the way we do initiatives in this state. It’ll make it where we have a year to do the initiative, it’ll reduce the amount of signatures and it’ll also ask that the secretary of state approve the language of the initiative before we go out and gather the signatures,” spokesperson for the group, Norma Sapp said. The group said that Oklahoma requires more signatures than any state in the country.

“The way the law is now, you’ve got 90 days to do 220,000 signatures,” Sapp said. “You have to hire people to do that.” Sapp said there has been controversy about that in the past…(Read the rest of the story)