Today, the Maine Senate passed Legislative Document 31.  

LD 31 has been approved by both chambers and will now appear on the ballot this upcoming November.

LD 31 addresses problems and concerns with the state’s current “Citizen Initiative” process.  This bill proposes an amendment to the Constitution of Maine to require that the signatures on a petition consist of voters from each of the State's two congressional districts, and the number of signatures from each congressional district be not less than 10% of the total vote for governor cast in that congressional district in the previous gubernatorial election.  

Comment / Analysis: Voters made a real mess with last year's four (4) referendum question approvals, and the Maine State legislature has spent significant time in 2017 cleaning up all the problems. This reform of the referendum process is an attempt to rein in abuses -- especially by out-of-state interests that try to buy themselves new laws in Maine's books. Thankfully, Bloomberg's Universal Background Check (UBC) referendum was outright defeated by Maine voters in November 2016.

https://www.nraila.org/articles/20170616/maine-ballot-initiative-reform-legislation-headed-to-ballot

It is an improvement.  

It will be interesting to see how the pro-referendum folks work against it, if at all.