Signature Gatherers

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.

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.

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).

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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!