Signature Gathering

Arizona Supremes Urge Initiative Reform

Joe Mathews — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:50:00 -0500

In an opinion in a case on a particular initiative, the Arizona Supreme Court urged broader reform of the initiative process, particularly with regards to signature gathering. The court argues that signature gathering has become too big and time-consuming a process. From the opinion, written by Justice Andrew Hurwitz and issued yesterday.

it would clearly be preferable for the legislature to modify the

statutory scheme in light of today’s realities to avoid such

structural problems. Our election officials are required to

process large numbers of initiative and referendum petitions.

The growth of the state’s electorate means that the number of

signatures submitted in order to qualify for placement on the

ballot has also steadily grown. And, even when the Secretary

and county recorders complete the verification process within

the statutory deadlines, the time for judicial review has been

shortened by the need to prepare ballots for early voting.

It is, of course, not within our constitutional

assignment to suggest specific legislative solutions to this

problem. And, if no change is made in the qualification

process, the judiciary will continue to decide election cases

with all appropriate celerity. But it is not, we think, beyond

our role to suggest that there may be a better way, and to

encourage the other branches of government to consider that

issue.

Judge Throws Out Nevada Signature Requirement

Joe Mathews — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 06:34:00 -0400

A federal judge ruled Monday that a new Nevada rule applying signature gathering requirements to all counties was unconstitutional. The distribution requirement said that it wasn't enough to simply get signatures from 10 percent of all voters in the state. Ballot measure sponsors needed 10 percent of voters in each county as well. The rule was one reason behind the widespread failure of initiatives to qualify for the ballot in Nevada this year.

The Nevada Initiative Shutout

Joe Mathews — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 13:45:00 -0400

In Nevada, not a single ballot initiative has managed to qualify for the ballot this year. There were 17 attempts (and four remain alive in the courts). But initiative sponsors ran afoul of changes in state law and requirements that signatures be collected in every county. The Las Vegas Review Journal breaks this down.

Connerly Falls Short Again, This Time in Arizona

Joe Mathews — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:39:00 -0400

The latest victim of Arizona's signature gathering mess is Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action initiative there. Connerly's effort there submitted a number of signatures well over the minimum required for qualification, but the state and counties found so many signatures to be invalid that it has been struck from the November ballot. Connerly is telling the Arizona press that he's not giving up--he's going to show the signatures are valid.

This is the third of five states in which Connerly's organization sponsored anti-affirmative action measures but failed to qualify them for the ballot. In each state, Connerly and his organization have blamed others -- state officials, opponents doing blocking campaigns, or even state laws. But it may be time to regroup and develop a better approach to signature gathering. Connerly is 2 for 5 this year. Batting .400 is good in baseball, but embarssing bad when you've got the funding and are qualifying measures for the ballot. One wonders when Connerly's financial backers will begin to complain that he is wasting their money.

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.

Arizona Initiative to Prohibit Universal Coverage Is Back On Nov. Ballot, For Now

Joe Mathews — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:55:00 -0400

Arizona's direct democracy is a mess. Signature gathering firms there are struggling to get valid signatures on initiative petitions. Three measures were knocked off the ballot because of low validity rates.

Now one of those initiatives -- a measure that would preemptively bar legislation such as that passed in Massachusetts (and pursued in California) for expanded health care coverage -- has received new life. A superior court judge ruled that some signatures marked invalid were, in fact, valid. When the new tally from a random sample was calculated, the initiative, Prop 101, had enough signatures to make the ballot, the Arizona Daily Star reports. This may not be the last world. Opponents could appeal.

An Independent Candidate Gets The Sigs, And Learns That Paid Is Cheaper Than Volunteer

Joe Mathews — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:08:00 -0400

Here is a Sacramento Bee item on an independent legislative candidate who got enough sigs -- some 21,000 to qualify for the ballot. This is rare (Former Long Beach Mayor Beverly O'Neill is one of a handful of politicians to make the ballot as a write-in in a significant election).

What's most interesting is what the candidate, Jim Fitzgerald, seems to have discovered during the process: paid signature gathering is effecitvely cheaper and more efficient. Fitzgerald started off with a volunteer effort to get the signatures, but, as those involved in the signature gathering game know, volunteer signature work is far more costly on a per-signature basis than a paid signature efffort. Fitzgerald went to a temp agency, according to the Sacramento Bee, and spent $30,000 to get the sigs. That's not bad by the way -- about $1.30 a signature. $2 a sig has become the default cost in many California signature gathering efforts.

The Arizona Signature Gathering Fiasco

Joe Mathews — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 20:06:00 -0400

In blockbuster democracy, there are always invalid signatures. People don't sign their own names. Forgery by gatherers can be a problem. Sometimes, people's signatures change over time, and no longer match registration cards filed decades ago. Or people mistakenly leave out part of their address, or sign on a petition from the wrong county. Some problems are to be expected. When initiative petition signatures are checked, about 70 percent of signatures will prove to be valid -- if the signature gathering operation was well run.

But in Arizona, the signature gathering efforts for multiple measures appear to have failed to meet that standard. According to the Arizona Republic, three measures appear to be in trouble. Two of them, one involving real estate transfers and another involving conservation, appear to have fallen short. A third, a transportation initiative, had so few valid signatures that it has failed to make the ballot. In random sampling, an estimated 42 percent of the signatures were invalid, suggesting that the people handling the gathering failed to do their job. Arizona's Secretary of State said that this was "among the largest overall invalid rates that I can recall ever seeing from a citizens initiative drive.” The initiative won't be on the ballot.

One excuse offered by petition circulators there; the counties and state may be slow in processing new voter registrations. Here's the background: when signature gatherers approach somebody who is not registered to vote, they often have them register on the spot, then sign the initiative petitions. If the initiative petitions are processed before voters are registered there could be a problem. There may be such a problem, but it's hard to imagine that would account for such a low validity rate. Having that many bad signatures suggests a deeper problem -- a problem broad enough to warrant investigation by legal authorities.

More On Internet Signature Gathering

Joe Mathews — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:16:00 -0400

In my summer column on Internet signature gathering, I missed this interesting June 2008 report commissioned by the Center for Governmental Studies on the very same subject. It notes there are real problems with such gathering, but also notes that there is a real risk of forgery under the current signature regime.

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.