Blockbuster Democracy

The Nevada legislature, in the guise of cleaning up signature gathering, has made it harder to qualify a measure for the ballot. Much harder.

The legislature recently imposed a distribution requirement that forces circulators to collect the signatures of 10 percent of the turnout in the most recent election in each of the state's Congressional districts. This makes the overall number of signatures to qualify an initiative from the ballot is now 60 percent higher -- 97,000 signatures, instead of 59,000, according to the Nevada Secretary of State.

Your blogger is sympathetic to efforts to clean up signature gathering and to make it harder to qualify initiatives -- as long as they are accompanied by measures to open access.  (In particular, the standards for qualifying referendum -- that is, reversals of legislative actions -- should be eased, and time limits on collecting signatures should be lengthened, to make the process less costly). But cleaning up the process involves doing better, more thorough checking of signatures. That's not what Nevada did.

With Referendum 71 appearing to have just enough signatures to qualify for the Washington state ballot, it's time for the legal challenges. Two interesting issues are being raised in court by opponents of the referendum (who are supporters of gay rights and same-sex marriage. 71 is a referendum of a law granting the rights of married couples to domestic partners in Washington).

1. What happens if petition circulators screw up? Circulators are supposed to sign and attest each page of signatures they collect. Inevitably, some simply forget. The Washington Secretary of State has decided to count those signatures -- about 2,000 -- anyway. Usually, this problem would be too small to matter, but Referendum 71 appears to have less than 1,000 signatures more than the requirement.

2. What happens if the person signing the petition wasn't a registered voter at the moment he or she signed? It's common practice -- in Washington state and elsewhere -- for petition circulators, when they encounter someone who isn't a registered voter, to have that person sign a registration form and then sign petitions. This is a very good thing -- petition circulators register hundreds of thousands of voters each year. But Referendum 71 opponents want to challenge the signatures in this case. The Washington Secretary of State instructed counters to check that signers were registered to vote -- but not to check the date.

Late word today from the Washington Secretary of State: Referendum 71 -- the measure that would ask voters to reverse legislation granting all the rights of married couples to couples registered as domestic partners -- has "more than the bare minimum" of signatures needed to qualify for the ballot, according to preliminary tallies.

The signature verification process on Referendum 71 has been an unusual public spectacle because referendum backers turned in only 137,000 signatures, only 16,000 more than the 121,000 required to qualify. That's not much of a cushion: validity rates of 70 percent for campaigns are common. But the rate for this measure appears to be higher--just barely high enough to qualify.

The Secretary of State's own in-house blog says that, with counting expected to be finished tomorrow, the measure will qualify with less than 1,000 votes to spare. "The final margin is the closest in recent history and undoubtedly one of the closest in state history," state Elections Director Nick Handy is quoted as saying in the blog.

For the referendum's backers (mostly conservative groups that oppose gay rights and same-sex marriage), it's a close call, and perhaps a lesson: if you want to spare yourself heartburn in direct democracy, get more signatures.

The problems of the California Republican Party have been a topic of debate and commentary for years. Now comes Thad Kousser, a top political scientist at UC San Diego, with a piece in the California Journal of Politics & Policy that offers the best explanation I've encountered: geopolitics. (The piece requires a free download).

I can't do justice to the quality of the argument and research in a brief blog post. But here's the gist: as California's politics have realigned (from a North-South orientation to a coast-vs.-inland divide), the Republicans have been split, ideologically and geographically, while the divisions between Democrats have become "muted."

Apologies for the slow posting last week. A combination of deadlines, technical difficulties and other work conspired against me. Look for daily postings here again, beginning right now.

Soon, I hope to be able to announce some improvements to this blog as well as the beginning of another blog focused on California reform. More to come soon.

A quick note for all of you in the 562 area code (that's the south part of Los Angeles County): New America's political reform program is holding a forum Sept. 29, at 5:30 p.m. at Long Beach City Hall. The topic: Instant Runoff Voting. More details here.

An initiative in Idaho would permit voters to apply for permanent absentee status and vote by mail in every election -- without having to file a request for an absentee ballot each time.

Here's the news. Backers of the initiative requested that the initiative be targeted for the 2012 ballot, not next year's ballot. That's almost unheard of. Why are they waiting? The backers tell the Spokesman-Review that they want to qualify the measure using volunteer signature gatherers, rather than the far more efficient paid circulators that typically do this work. Volunteers aren't nearly as productive, so the extra time gives backers more time -- (two additional summers of county fairs, specifically) -- to get the job done.

Irish "punters" -- that is, bookmakers -- allow you to wager on elections. And that's bad news for supporters of the Lisbon Treaty, utitowhich goes before Irish voters later this year. The treaty is a de facto new constitution for the European Union (it includes the world's first transnational initiative). Legislative bodies in other countries have already ratified the document, but Ireland permits voters to consider the treaty. Last year, the Irish voted it down.

The treaty is expected to win this year. But Reuters reports that "punters" have lowered the odds on defeat, from 5/1 to 5/2.

The news about Latin American direct democracy just keeps getting worse. The plebiscite -- where the government or a president uses a referendum to add to his power -- has become a common method of doing business. Among its practitioners are elected leaders in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Honduras (where the attempt to hold a plebiscite led the military, congress and the courts to remove the president from office). Nicaragua's president has indicated he may hold a similar vote. Even the good news of direct democracy in the region -- Costa Rica's referendum on a free trade agreement -- was a plebiscitary (that is, top down, from the government) exercise.

Many of these plebiscitary presidents have been figures of the left. But now we have a figure of the right, Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe, attempting exactly the same thing -- a plebiscite to allow him to serve a third term. 

So many of chip maker Intel's employees donated to Prop 8 in California last year that the company became the target of a boycott by same-sex marriage supporters.

That hasn't discouraged the company from issuing an endorsement in what may be the most significant referendum in the world -- the coming Irish vote on the Lisbon Treaty, which would remake the rules of the European Union. Intel, which has a substantial Irish unit, says that passing the treaty will improve the continent's business climate; another defeat of the treaty -- which Irish voters turned down in the first referendum last year -- would undermine confidence. Intel is preparing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for the yes campaign. One wonders if the endorsement by foreign companies on a ballot question involving issues of national sovereignty is wise or even helpful.