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Voter groups held a preemptive memorial service at the Capitol Tuesday afternoon for the state’s citizen initiative process.

The memorial came ahead of a vote on a bill that would make it harder to amend the state constitution through citizen-led efforts.

Advocates like Rich Templin with the AFL-CIO said the bill is the latest a long line of attacks on the citizen initiative process.

“For 16 years we have seen over 100 pieces of legislation filed killing the citizens’ right to direct democracy with 1,000 paper cuts. The bill that’s being considered behind us later today is simply the final nail in the coffin,” said Tempin.

The bill was amended in the Senate committee to reduce the threshold for Supreme Court review from 50 percent of the target signatures to 33 percent.

It also capped the cost for counting petitions at $1.

Currently only 10 percent of the target signatures are required for Supreme Court review and it costs only 10 cents to count each petition.