Ballot Initiatives

Last fall's initiative campaigns in Colorado saw an extraordinary change in the ballot at the last minute. Labor unions agreed to withdraw from the ballot a package of initiatives that targeted businesses in exchange for a promise by business groups to contribute to a labor effort to defeat three business-backed initiatives. The four labor-backed measures technically remained on the ballot, but under Colorado law, without the support of their labor sponsors, the initiatives were a dead letter. The votes cast on those initiatives didn't count.

To some, it looked like business groups were bribing the labor unions to pull the measures off the ballot. So two Republican lawmakers introduced a bill that would make it a misdemeanor to withdraw a ballot initiative in exchange for money or any promise of value. The bill was defeated in committee last week on a party line vote, the Rocky Mountain News reports.

There's a lot of talk about new ballot measures circulating in California and other Western states. The California Teachers Assn., for example, has approved circulation of its initiative that would hike the state sales tax to create a new, protected fund for schools. But that initiative isn't in petition circulators' hands yet, according to a survey I conducted this morning. In fact, signature gatherers appear to be in wait and see mode. There are a handful of local measures. In Sacramento, circulators were just told to turn in signatures on a measure that would seek to put more power in the office of Mayor Kevin Johnson. But that's about it, for now. I'll check back again in a week, when, various circulators assure me, they expect to be busy.

Both the outgoing governor, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary-nominee Janet Napolitano, and her successor, Jan Brewer, have called for major reform of the state's initiative process. So has the Arizona Republic, in this recent editorial.  It's hard to blame them. Arizona saw perhaps unprecedented signature fraud last year. A typical validity rate for signatures collected in an initiative campaign is 70 percent. But multiple measures last year had validity rates of less than 50 percent. That's strong evidence of institutional, across-the-board fraud.

Political consultants usually prefer ballot measure campaigns to candidate campaigns. The money's often better. The workload is lighter. And ballot initiatives don't have spouses. Top Democratic -- Mark Fabiani, Chris Lehane, Ace Smith -- and Republican -- Steve Schmidt, Adam Mendelsohn -- consultants, all based in California, have formed a company to pursue ballot measure business. And not just in California. More details via the Sacramento Bee.

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.

The conservative writer Steven Malanga asks whether Prop 13-style tax revolts are even possible anymore.

A Utah lawmaker has introduced a bill to reduce the length of ballot measure titles from 100 words -- too lengthy apparently for voters in Utah -- to 75 words. 100 words isn't much in an era when complex ballot initiatives often exceed 5,000 words. This story suggests that state and local governments also might save money on printing costs with fewer words.

Ballot initiatives sometimes are not just measures. They're cottage industries, with sponsors filing the same or similar initiatives all over the country. Think of term limits, or eminent domain protection, or the Humane Society's many animal protection measures. 

Now there's a new genre coming: the preservation of "secret ballot" union elections. The context: Unions have long complained -- with good reason -- that the current system for organizing workers gives corporations too much power. That process is built around secret ballot elections, but the process has such loose time limits and allows for endless legal appeals -- and the intimidation and firing of workers in the meantime -- that unions have soured on the secret ballot. In its place, labor wants federal legislation called the Employee Free Choice Act. Backed by Democrats, including President-elect Obama, EFCA would allow unions attempting to organize a workplace to win formal recognition without a secret ballot vote. They would have to gather signed cards from a majority of people in the workplace -- a process generally known as card check. Some employers currently choose to recognize unions who gather cards, but most insist on the secret ballot election. It's their choice. EFCA would flip that, giving the unions the choice -- cards or secret ballot -- in how they organize a workplace.

It's not just California. The Associated Press looks at how voter-approved initiatives are adding to the budget headaches in several cash-strapped states.

A state legislator in Missouri, Mike Parson, is proposiing two major changes in the signature gathering game. 1. Requiring all signature gatherers to register with the state. 2. Barring petition circulators from being paid per signature. Instead, they would have to be paid by the hour.

It's not clear that Parson's first proposal is legal. Petitioning the government is an essential part of First Amendment freedoms, and any law to restrict petition circulators is unlikely to survive the courts. The second idea is not legally suspect, but it would have the effect of reducing access to the ballot. The per-signature system of payment produces far more signatures, more efficiently, than any other system.