Ballot Initiatives
Feb. 5th, 2026 06:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
writerkitI am, after today's adventures in inhaler, seriously contemplating how one would go about putting forth a ballot question requiring that health insurance companies cannot deny a drug someone was already on for reasons of a formulary change--ie, if someone is already on a drug, the insurance company must continue to cover it without requiring any extra paperwork whether or not it's still on the formulary. You'd have to word it fairly carefully, because I'd want to cover both the situations of "we don't cover that drug anymore" and the Flovent event where the company stopped making the brand name but there was still a generic that no one covered.
First one needs to write it, and the attorney general's office apparently invites you to submit drafts for them to comment on the wording of, so there's help available with wording it properly.
One needs at least ten registered voters to do the initial thing, who are willing to have their names and addresses published on the thing and also jump through the hoops of getting a certificate of voter registration. You need to file it before the first Wednesday in August of an odd-numbered year. The Attorney General then announces what's been certified on the first Wednesday in September. After which you file for blank petition forms.
And then you get to the part that requires a team effort, which is collecting 3% of the total votes cast for governor in signatures, no more than 25% of which can come from any one county, between getting your petition forms and fourteen days before the first Wednesday in December. At which point if the Legislature doesn't just do the thing you then need to go out and get .5% of the total votes for governor, with the same county percentage rules, to get it on the actual ballot. (It does not specify whether these must be different people.)
I presume if one is taking on healthcare companies one also wants set up a formal political action committee to solicit donations for some sort of advertising budget once you're at the on-the-ballot stage.
But this looks surprisingly doable, assuming one can recruit a sufficient number of people to spend time running around collecting signatures in other parts of the state. I suppose if I am serious about this the first thing to do would be get some draft wording together and then ask around to try to get nine other people.
(If you couldn't tell, I am in the process of my second time having to switch inhalers because of insurance company shenanigans. They will wish they'd just covered my inhaler by the time I'm done with them.)
First one needs to write it, and the attorney general's office apparently invites you to submit drafts for them to comment on the wording of, so there's help available with wording it properly.
One needs at least ten registered voters to do the initial thing, who are willing to have their names and addresses published on the thing and also jump through the hoops of getting a certificate of voter registration. You need to file it before the first Wednesday in August of an odd-numbered year. The Attorney General then announces what's been certified on the first Wednesday in September. After which you file for blank petition forms.
And then you get to the part that requires a team effort, which is collecting 3% of the total votes cast for governor in signatures, no more than 25% of which can come from any one county, between getting your petition forms and fourteen days before the first Wednesday in December. At which point if the Legislature doesn't just do the thing you then need to go out and get .5% of the total votes for governor, with the same county percentage rules, to get it on the actual ballot. (It does not specify whether these must be different people.)
I presume if one is taking on healthcare companies one also wants set up a formal political action committee to solicit donations for some sort of advertising budget once you're at the on-the-ballot stage.
But this looks surprisingly doable, assuming one can recruit a sufficient number of people to spend time running around collecting signatures in other parts of the state. I suppose if I am serious about this the first thing to do would be get some draft wording together and then ask around to try to get nine other people.
(If you couldn't tell, I am in the process of my second time having to switch inhalers because of insurance company shenanigans. They will wish they'd just covered my inhaler by the time I'm done with them.)
no subject
Date: 2026-02-06 09:06 pm (UTC)3% and then 0.5% seems really weird to me! I had to double check and... yeah, that's what it says. :-/
no subject
Date: 2026-02-06 09:21 pm (UTC)Collecting the signatures is a *LOT* of work. Time-consuming, and the state will check: if you get too many people signing as Jack Off, or double-signing, etc, the petition can fail.