Signature Gatherers

Oregon's Move to Regulate Signature Gathering

Joe Mathews — Wed, 27 May 2009 14:29:00 -0400

Here's an interesting story from last week's Oregonian on that state legislature's efforts to curb signature fraud. (Your blogger is quoted in it). Oregon already is rare among initiative states for banning per-signature pay for circulators. Since 2007, it has required that gatherers register with the state.

Such regulations have made signature gathering slightly more expensive in Oregon, according to those who work there. (The per-signature system is nothing if not economically efficient). But widespread signature fraud in other states -- most notably Arizona's Maricopa County last year -- requires some response.

The Oregon legislation does two things.

1. It seeks to bar signature gatherers with a history of fraud from circulating petitions, and imposes large fines against companies that are found to have permitted fraud knowingly. My reaction: all to the good.

2. It requires that signatures be turned in at least once a month. This is billed as anti-fraud device. If it were adopted in a pay-per-signature state like California, it also could save some money for initiative sponsors by combating hoarding (circulators often hang onto petitions for a long time until the price per-signature goes up.

These are both modest reforms. The one potential problem is how #1 is enforced. In my experience, signature gatherers are sometimes people who have had problems in their lives (often substance abuse) or gaps in their work histories that make it difficult for them to secure jobs from more traditional employers. I have no trouble with barring gatherers who have engaged in petition fraud. But I fear that the law might be used to prevent anyone with a criminal history from collecting signatures. To do so would keep some of the best circulators in the country out of Oregon, and for no good reason.

Arizona House Committee Votes To Bar Per-Signature Pay

Joe Mathews — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 12:03:00 -0400

In an 8-0 vote, a committee of the Arizona House last week approved a bill that would bar signature gatherers from being paid per signature, the Republic reports.

This is potentially a big deal. Per-signature pay is the American standard for petition circulators, whether they are circulating ballot initiatives or candidate qualification papers. It's not clear what might replace such a system in Arizona. Hourly pay is probably not cost effective.

The bill still needs approval in another house committee, not to mention the full house and senate. But the idea appears to have political momentum in the wake of widespread fraud in signature gathering last year in the state.

On the Street: Washington State, Florida

Joe Mathews — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 17:10:00 -0500

There are plenty of initiatives in California cleared for circulation, but nothing on the street, as of my last check last weekend. The May 19 special election came too quickly for anyone to qualify an initiative, and the next scheduled statewide election isn't until June 2010. And many of state's signature gatherers have departed for Florida or Washington.

What are they working on there? In Florida, there are two redistricting initiatives on the ballot, paying 70 cents a piece. In Washington, a conservative, anti-property tax initiative is paying 75 cents. Both prices are low, but I'm told that circulators are showing a lot of interest in both petitions. Deflation and the bad economy have not spared direct democracy. (Hat tip: Public Petitioner).

Show-Me Street

Joe Mathews — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 14:44:00 -0500

The Webster-Kirkwood Times offers a very detailed rundown of the initiative petitions now circulating on the streets of Missouri.

Paul Jacob On His Leg Irons

Joe Mathews — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:21:00 -0500

The most prominent member of the Oklahoma Three, now freed, speaks out on the experience of being charged for the crime of trying to qualify an initiative for the ballot. Via This Is Common Sense.

The Street

Joe Mathews — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 19:20:00 -0500

I spent part of the morning checking in with signature gatherers in California and in a handful of big Western states. No major statewide initiatives or referenda circulating at the moment, but that is expected to change in the next few days. I'll have more as various measures hit the street. And if readers of this blog come across signature gatherers in their travels, please let us know what they're hawking.

No Sigs Hired Yet On Recall

Joe Mathews — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 13:57:00 -0400

In a quick morning canvas of signature gatherers and local coordinators in California, none of the half-dozen people I checked with around the state has been hired to do the Arnold recall as yet. This is the slow season for the signature gathering game. Many of California's gatherers are working on local initiative or referendum petitions -- there's a significant one in Stockton, and several in Southern California -- or are out of state. The good news for supporters of recalling Arnold is that it wouldn't be hard to hire signature gatherers fast, and with little else on the street, the price wouldn't be particularly high.

Ideas For Arizona's Signature Mess

Joe Mathews — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:44:00 -0400

The Arizona Daily Star offers up a long editorial on the need to fix the state's initiative process. It's timely. Three measures were knocked off the ballot because of invalid signatures and two others made the ballot despite questions about their signatures. What to do?

The Star offers two ideas, one bad and one good. The first involves getting rid of paid signature gatherers. The problem: volunteer drives are less efficient and more expensive, on a per-signature basis. That's why there hasn't been a successful volunteer petition drive for a statewide measure in California since 1982. True professional petition circulators are a safeguard against fraud. Eliminating them would create more problems than it solves.

The second idea is a better one: loosening the deadline. Arizona has a fairly tight deadline for getting signatures and qualifying for the ballot -- four months. That makes signature gathering more expensive and creates an incentive for fraud. If you want true grass roots signature gathering, the deadline should be lifted entirely. (On this second point, the Tuscon Citizen agrees).

I'd also like to see Internet signature gathering with security measures that allow for independent verification.

Summer Column: It's Time To Permit Voters To Sign Initiative Petitions On the Internet

Joe Mathews — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 00:19:00 -0400

After a busy spring and summer, signature gathering across the country is finally reaching its 2008 conclusion. The final deadlines for turning in signatures for November ballot initiatives are this week in three states: Colorado (August 4), North Dakota (August 5), and Ohio (August 6). Deadlines in all the other states have already passed. So I'm heading to a small town in rural Wisconsin (your blogger's Cheesehead in-laws have a bug-infested family cottage on a lake) for a week to catch up on sleep (you may have noticed a few more mental hiccups than usual on the blog lately) and do some writing. I plan to stay away from email and the Internet until Aug. 11. But before I go, I wanted to advance an idea: permitting voters to sign initiative petitions on-line.

In some states, there's already limited circulation by Internet. If a petition is formatted right, it can be emailed to voters, who print it out, sign it and send it in. That's fine, but I'd like to go further, permitting voters to add their names to ballot initiative petitions as they now do to other on-line petitions. For security's sake, the voters would have to provide more than just their real name. They'd have to give an address, an email, and a phone number that matches the number on their voter registration--a phone number where they could be reached to verify that their signature is authentic.

Opening up signature gathering in this way would address several of the major criticisms of direct democracy in general and the ballot initiative process in particular. Let's go through them one by one.

CRITICISM 1. That the ballot process is dominated by wealthy special interests. That's largely true--because of the costs involved in signature gathering. In California, for example, it now takes at least $2 million to qualify a measure. But Internet signatures would permit grass roots groups to circulate petitions at a much lower cost.

2. That paid signature gatherers dominate direct democracy. That's also true. In fact, because of the logistical difficulties in fielding volunteer petition gatherers, it's actually cheaper to hire paid gatherers than to use volunteers. Most "reforms" targeting signature gatherers would make signature gathering more costly and complicated -- thus INCREASING the need for paid petition circulators. Allowing petitions to circulate easily on the Internet would be one of the few ways to make paid gatherers less central to the process.

3. That signature deadlines are too short. The Internet signature gathering would be faster and make ridiculously short timelines like the one in Oklahoma, which permits only 90 days to get the signatures, more reasonable.

4. That blocking campaigns have become too aggressive. This is a conservative complaint that is getting more attention, though I tend to discount it. (Blocking campaigns have long been common practice in direct democracy, and I've yet to see a campaign that was truly effective in stopping signature gathering. The real problem is the short deadlines in some states and the attempts to use the law and, in Oklahoma's case, law enforcement to shut down campaigns that the political class opposes). On the Internet, however, blocking campaigns -- which usually consist of sending out goons of some sort to harass signature gatherers and those they approach -- shouldn't be a factor.

The obvious objection to permitting Internet signatures is security. In an era of conspiracy theories about electronic voting (and real concern about the records and tactics of companies such as Diebold), security concerns must be taken into account. That's why state officials (and local officials in the case of local ballot measures) must receive enough personal data from the Internet signers to verify that they've signed.

But remember, the system being replaced is not a particularly secure one. In most states, including California, the overwhelming majority of signatures are never checked. Instead, random sampling is done to check the signatures and addresses against registration records. Voters who sign the petitions are not contacted. The Internet signature regime I'm proposing would require more checking than we currently have -- likely at some added costs to states.

Some politicians and opponents of direct democracy might object that Internet signatures thus require an indirect state subsidy. That may well be true. My view: it's a small price to pay for promoting a more open, grass roots, democratic system of direct democracy. And if there are still objections to the added costs of verification, why not charge a higher filing fee to initiative sponsors to cover the cost? California's current fee for filing -- $200 -- doesn't begin to match the cost to the attorney general's office of reviewing the measure, writing a title and summary, and then defending it in court.

Who else might object to Internet signatures? The signature gathering companies, naturally. But I think they'd still get business, particularly in cases in which time is short and an initiative needs a number of signatures fast. I also think such companies, many of which have developed their own databases and software for verifying signatures, would find that they could sell their verification work to initiative sponsors and perhaps even states and municipalities. With petitions circulating on the Internet, there would be more measures out there -- and that higher volume would mean more business.

Well, there's my idea. Please discuss and post. I'll write more when I'm back on the grid.

Attack On Three Colorado Measures

Joe Mathews — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 18:49:00 -0400

The above ad is running in Colorado. It attacks the well-known Amendment 47 (the Right to Work measure) and two other ballot initiatives supported by business and opposed by labor. Denver's ABC station does a fact-check of the ad here.

The ad is interesting for students of direct democracy because it criticizes the measures not for their content but for how signatures were gathered. For those who know the blockbuster democracy business, the most interesting part is the claim that people with criminal records helped gather signatures. No kidding!

A note from planet reality: the sort of people who are willing to work long hours gathering signatures and getting paid in cash often have criminal records. In my own experience with gatherers, many have substance abuse problems. If folks with records were barred from gathering signatures, there would be no signature gatherers in America--and no ballot initiatives.