Kudos to Rep. Sherry Appleton (D-Poulsbo) for introducing a bill, HB 1087, that would prohibit paying signature gatherers on a per-signature basis.
NEW SECTION. Sec. 1. The legislature finds that the preservation of the integrity of the initiative and referendum process is of utmost importance to the citizens of Washington. In Prete v. Bradbury, the court of appeals for the ninth circuit concluded that an Oregon law banning payment of electoral petition signature gatherers on a per-signature basis is not per se unconstitutional. Courts of appeals for the second and eighth circuits have upheld laws banning payment per-signature in New York and North Dakota as well.
The legislature finds that paying workers based on the number of signatures obtained on an initiative or referendum petition increases the possibility of fraud in the signature gathering process. This practice may encourage the signature gatherer to misrepresent a ballot measure, to apply undue pressure on a person to sign a petition that the person is not qualified to sign, to encourage signing even if the person has previously signed, or to invite forgery. To protect the process from fraudulent practices, compensation per-signature needs to be addressed in Washington.NEW SECTION. Sec. 2. A new section is added to chapter 29A.84 RCW to read as follows:
A person who pays or receives consideration based on the number of signatures obtained on an initiative or referendum petition is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable to the same extent as a misdemeanor that is punishable under RCW 9A.20.021.
My buddy Tim Eyman told David Postman that the measure is unconstitutional, and I guess Eyman should know, since he’s managed to pen and pass four unconstitutional measures himself. Still, considering the fact that a similar Oregon law has already passed constitutional muster, Tim shouldn’t be so cocky.
And speaking of unconstitutional initiatives, Eyman himself filed a new one yesterday, requiring a two-thirds vote for the legislature to approve any tax increase. Of course, the state constitution specifies a simple majority, so what’s the point? Yawn.
Why do moonbats hate initiative process? What’s wrong with giving The People final say on important issues? Seems pretty basic…
What’s wrong with giving The People final say on important issues?
NOTHING WRONG WITH INITIATIVES. IT’S THE PAID SIGNATURE GATHERERS STUPID. THERE’S ANOTHER WORD FOR THEM AND SHOWBOATERS LIKE EYMAN – WHORES.
DON’T LIKE YOUR REPRESENTATION IN THE GOVERNMENT? VOTE IT OUT.
DUMBASS.
PAY YOUR FUCKING GAMBLING DEBT.
MTR:
Here’s your x-ray.
While I’m sympathetic to abolishing the per-signature payment system, is there really a problem? Or is this like photo ID for voting — an emotionally-charged solution to a problem that doesn’t even exist? I mean, how many people show up at polling places posing as someone else? (None.) Well, by the same taken, are there really forged initiative signatures being turned in? Not saying there aren’t, just wondering if it’s really a problem?
@3 that is fun-nee!!! HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR
roger, in my opinion there really is a problem, and paying per signature is only part of it. see, the initiative process is great, if 10% of the citizens feel like something should be a law then we should vote on it. The problem is, these paid gatherers are lying.
They say that signing the petition means you think it should be put on a ballot, in fact when I have voiced to signature gatherers that I didnt think something should be a law, they wanted me to sign anyway, ‘dont you think the people should vote on it?’.
Instead of look for 10% who think something should be a law, the signature gatherers are finding 10% who think it should be on the ballot. That is fraud.
So I see it as a twofold problem, a basic misunderstanding of the initiative process coupled with people who have found ways to make lots of money using that process and capitolizing on that basic misunderstanding
MTR,
Why are Republicans so fond of fraud pervading our electoral system?
I guess we learned it from Rossi getting screwed.
Nobody hates the initiative process, sonny. We just get tired of explaining how the process works to stoopud folks who can’t seem to ever get it.
Maybe you could start an initiative to eliminate stoopudity?
OOOH! I missed the capital letters on The People. OOOH! What rhetorical skill!
Okay: think reeeeeally hard now. “T”he “P”eople are not the final say. Something else does this. Can you think of it?
Goldy: It is too early to say that the notion to ban pay per signature is constitutional. The Prete case that you’re referring to (the “constitutional muster” that the Oregon law passed) was a lower court decision.
An earlier law in Colorado that outlawed paid signature gatherers was struck down because it violated the First Amendment. According to this report (warning, its a pdf) by the Initiative and Referendum Institute, Oregon’s ban was upheld because they could prove that the law prevented fraud:
The lower court ruling was appealed, we’ll see if it is upheld later.
In truth, Dems ought to be ecstatic that Eyman is running around filing initiatives and calling press conferences..In my opinion, he simply distracts republicans/conservatives from focusing on electing R’s to the state legislature.
Personally I think this is all an ego deal for him and I wish he would quit.
Side note….
I am less concerned about paid signature gatherers fouling the intitiative process then special interest groups fouling the legislative process……..
RightStuff @ 12
Shhhh.
RR at 4: I saw a pretty egregious case of over-reaching, to say the least, during the last initiative campaigns at the QFC in Bellevue. I was there with my boss, a Japanese national, picking up some steaks for a BBQ at his house. Outside an initiative gatherer to “repeal the death tax” was trying to tell people that their entire estate would go to the tax man unless the law was repealed, that no estate was exempt, and that it would hit homeowners the hardest, taking away the equity in their homes so that surviving spouses would have to sell in order to pay the tax. Complete B.S. That would be bad enough, but one even tried to coerce my boss to sign. When he said he wasn’t a citizen, they told him it was okay, that he should go ahead and sign, he can always get his citizenship later. It was a pretty incredible display.
“so what’s the point?”
Keeping Tim employed is the point.
There is nothing wrong with the initiative process. For history buffs, the late Senator A.L. “Slim” Rasmussen used the process when Senate leadership bottled up his bill to allow for color margarine. The dairy industry’s influence on key Senators made it hard on consumers to purchase margarine instead of butter. Margarine could not be sold with artificial color, it had to be sold in its natural form in which it looks like lard. It was sold with color tablets consumers could mix in to make it look more like butter. Rasmussen, who was a horses ass himself in many ways, fought the dairy industry for years. He finally used the initiative process, circulating the petitions himself and with a handful of volunteers, to get the issue to the ballot. It was easily approved by voters.
Compare that example, or one of the few others in more recent times in which volunteer, true believers gathered signatures to bring an issue to the people and you have what the founders intended with the initiative process. It was never intended to be a business model.
All you have to do is see one of those guys with a table in front of Target with every initiative petition to know what the problem is. He doesn’t care about any one of the issues he is pushing and most often can’t even accurately explain what any of the initiatives he is circulating does.
Good for Sherry for having the guts to bring this bill forward. Now lets see if Frank Chopp has the guts to handle some controversy and let the bill pass.
I particularly hate the types of initiatives Tim keeps trying to pass which require a super-majority for changes in tax laws. It’s kind of a “tag- you’re it, no tag backs!” theory of government and tax/spending reform.
Tim thinks if he can get 50.0001% of the voters to agree with his proposal once, particularly in an off-year election which otherwise doesn’t generate much interest, then his voters (which might only comprise a small fraction of the total electorate) can defeat any spending proposals by much larger majorities in the legislature. He knows well that a two-thirds or three-fourths majority is virtually impossible to obtain on any tax/spending measure.
In other words, he thinks a few wingnut votes on an initiative should count more than a much larger vote for our legislatures, or for a much larger majority of our legislative votes. It is pure arrogance.
Hell, I’ll testify about the misrepresentation I saw on the last few initiatives Eyman put out there.
If you believe a bill should be law, then you should be out there stumping for signatures yourself, not paying people to do it for you.
David @ 19
Can we apply the same to Politician’s running for election. All their staff is volunteer, no paid managers, and no contributions, just a do-it-yourself stumping.
Geez just think how clean it would be. No PACS, nor lobbyist snooping around.
Great idea. If good for initiatives, its good for elections…..Same thing huh?
Randall @ 17
Interesting history with the margarine coloring initiative.
I would like to see the reverse logic applied to cigarettes.
How about an initiative to require that all cigarette packaging (i.e. cartons and packs) be fairly generic? Something like white with black lettering, maybe Arial font. Maybe “CIGARETTES” and either “CARTON OF 200” or “PACK OF 20” in larger letters at the top. A nice sized skull & bones in the middle with “POISON”. Then maybe ALL four or so Surgeon General warnings. Near the bottom, the brand name and other descriptive information by the manufacturer in the same Arial font. No other graphics. Also a full disclosure of the tar and nicotine content.
I am sure it would pass. Tobacco isn’t too popular in this state.
Well I worked as a paid signature gatherer for the Hanford initiative, and it paid $1 per signature. If it had paid less, I probably would not have participated, cause I needed the money at the time, and would have been working elsewhere. As it was, I recruited a few friends as well. Getting enough signatures is really quite hard. And for all the talk of non-citizens etc, signing, the companies paying really do want VALID sigs… because you don’t want your initiative invalidated. So there’s the other side of the coin for progressives. The Handford initiative would not have passed, and the people would have never voted on that issue… and never been able to even have a voice, in what is the most polluted site in the Western Hemisphere.
So what if I made $15-40 an hour while I was doing it. I was good at collecting signatures. And I was good at explaining the issue. Heck I got a member of the Department of Defense to sign the thing… and I never once tried to misrepresent the bill. I didn’t even misrepresent the fact that is was a “statement” and not likely to do much.
Now what I am hearing in this thread is more a complaint about lying, not the money being paid to signature gatherers. Only in so much as it encourages people to lie about the initiative. Well, if we could make lying in politics illegal, heck most people would end up silenced, people and politicians alike.
What I discovered as a lefty signature gatherer was not that the process encouraged me to lie, but rather that the avenues for public discourse, and the venues for citizens to engage in the initiative process are scarce. From the grocery store to the mall, to pretty much any place people actually congregate, there are very few locations to perform the task of collecting signatures and to engage your fellow citizens in civic life.
In addition, I found that most people were not interested in the first place. Most commonly they were in a hurry, or “too busy,” to care.
So as a signature gatherer, if you were not paid on performance, the hurdles are too high for most initiatives to jump the bar. Why? Because gathering signatures is not a very fun thing to do, and if you paid hourly there would still need to be “incentives” for “production,” or no one would be interested in doing the work.
As I see it, the problem is not with Tim Eyman, the problem is much deeper than one guy that exploits the system. And eliminating paid signature gatherers will not solve these problems. My guess is it will simply lead to unintended consequences, and the loss of one more decent paying job. What do you think, that they’ll replace paid signature gatherer jobs with 20-$40 per hour paying positions?
So maybe I’m biased, but that’s a whole lot better than minimum wage. Even if the Dems raise it to 7 bucks over 26 months, after 10 years.
Gentry @ 22:
I am also against outlawing paid-signatures for a couple of reasons. A) The law wouldn’t directly address the problem (crappy Initiatives from the likes of Eyman, who is in the biz to make money and serve broader strategic conservative interests) and instead punishes everyone for the reckless audacity of a few. and B) I would lean toward the various court rulings which call such laws unconstitutional. Oh, and I also agree that it would directly harm people who need the job….
Instead, I think disclosure is the answer.
Here is what I posted on Postman’s blog yesterday—-
I think Tim Eyman is right–on but a single aspect of this issue. The courts have been reluctant to differentiate between paid advocacy and free speech, and would strike down this particular legislation as soon as it crossed into the courtroom.
I would propose a simpler solution–full disclosure. In my proposal, a signature gatherer would be bound by rules of the Public Disclosure Commission, just as campaign advertising and advocacy is. Gatherers (paid and unpaid) would be required to conspicuously display information regarding:
1. How much they are being paid,
2. By whom, and
3. Whether or not they are permanent residents of the jurisdiction directly affected by the initiative. (In my own wanderings, around 90% of the gatherers who answered my question stated that they were from out-of-state, almost all from California)
This simple disclosure would give a little more information to voters weighing whether to sign or not. It could be a basic three-block form at the top of each printed petition, to be filled out legibly. The financial cost would be relatively small to initiative campaign sponsors.
The voters have a right to know–disclosure is good for Democracy and good for public policy. Creatures that run from political sunshine rather that embrace it can be described as political cockroaches.
I mentioned this scheme once at a public forum where Mr. Eyman was speaking, and asked for his feedback. He answered that, “Jewish people were required to wear yellow stars on their clothing” in Nazi Germany, equating my proposal to somthing a Fascist, racist dictator might dream up. He did not elaborate beyond this comment.
I think Eyman knows that his campaigns rely on paid advocacy that would not exist without a veil of false-populism. Once the veil is pulled aside and the signature gatherers are exposed, in large part, as persons who have no interest in the outcome of an initiative campaign beyond their own paycheck, Eyman’s Offense rapidly becomes temporary.
Posted by Kurtyboy at 09:42 AM, Jan 09, 2007
Would this fly?
Oh yeah, good. Take the people’s power and voice away to keep these fiscally irresponsible legislators in check. Goldy’s just mad that buddy Timmy does things instead of just talking about doing things. This bullshit was proposed my an ignorant, uneducated little man named Jacobsen. He also supports other frivolous ideas such as requiring the use of headlights when one’s windsheild wipers are activated. That should be common sense, not a fucking law that gives the police yet another reason to stop you. I ask, if I use my intermittent feature, do I have to blink my lights on and off simultaneously? That Jacobsen guy ranks right up there in total douche-bags. If you support this obvious violation of our rights and want to increase power to already overpowered lawmakers, then you’re dumber than you look and deserve to be thrown into the sound forthwith. ‘Nuff said you morons.