You’d think that Jon Hansen, with all of his legal education and Legislative experience, would be better at writing clear, consistent legislation. But no.
Take his 2025 House Bill 1256, part of his war on initiative and referendum. This tricky bill requires signers of ballot question petitions to remember and provide the address on their voter registration card, not their current residential address. To cover the fact that he was targeting the initiative and referendum process, Speaker Hansen extended that address change to apply to candidates, but his HB 1256 language about throwing out signatures for addresses that don’t match voter registration to ballot measure petitions, not candidate petitions.
As usual, Jon’s so hot to wage war on democracy that he forgets basic statutory consistency.
But that’s what we have a Secretary of State for:
10. An Act to provide uniformity for petition signature addresses.
a. With the passage of HB 1256, an individual signing a statewide ballot question petition or a county/state candidate petition must provide their voter registration address. This requirement was not updated for other petitions, including county ballot question petitions, municipal petitions, school district petitions, etc.
b. This bill will require an individual signing any type of petition to provide their voter registration address and specify that the address provided must be substantially the same as the address at which the individual is registered to vote on order for the signature to count [Secretary of State Monae Johnson, proposed bills for 2026 Legislative Session, presented to State Board of Elections 2025.11.18].
Petition consistency matters. Because of Hansen and Legislature’s mid-cycle meddling, we already have the curious and confusing situation where voters have to sign their residence address on two circulating initiative petitions but their voter registration address on another initiative petition launched after HB 1256 took effect. Left unremedied, HB 1256 will create a permanent inconsistency in how voters sign petitions and how election officials validate petitions.
Secretary Johnson seeks to remedy Speaker Hansen’s inconsistency. I would humbly suggest she resolve the problem more simply by urging repeal of HB 1256, restoring all petitions to ask people where they live (since that will mean fewer voter errors and more reliable information about the actual location of signers), and remove from the Secretary the unnecessary burden of checking voter addresses during the intense petition validation process. The less of Jon Hansen we leave in our petition statutes, the better.