Doe v Reed, the case from Washington state over whether names and addresses of petition signers should be public, is being heard in the U.S. Supreme Court on April 28.

The American Bar Association maintains an excellent web page that makes it possible for anyone to read any or all briefs, in any case about to be argued in the U.S. Supreme Court. Anyone may read the Doe v Reed briefs at this link. Scroll down to April 28.

Fourteen amicus briefs have been filed in support of privacy, and nine have been filed in support of the state of Washington, which wishes to release the names and addresses to groups so that the information may be put on a web page. One amicus on each side was submitted late, and each may or may not be accepted by the Court.

Some of the groups arguing on the side of the state say that the names and addresses should be released because that makes it possible to detect fraud. In order to buttress their position that fraud exists, two briefs attack Ralph Nader’s 2004 petition efforts. The brief of the National Conference of State Legislatures, footnote 8, refers the reader to a New York Times story of October 14, 2004, titled “Court Strikes Nader from Pennsylvania Ballot.”

The brief of Ohio and 17 other states asserts that because Nader’s 2004 petition from Ohio was public information, the 2004 decision of the Secretary of State to put Nader on the ballot was reversed. This account is very misleading. It says that the people who challenged Nader’s petition found additional fraud that Ohio election officials had missed. Actually, the challengers did not find any fraudulent signatures; they merely showed that some of Nader’s petition circulators weren’t Ohio residents, so that all their work was then stricken (since then, the Ohio ban on out-of-state circulators has been invalidated by the 6th circuit).

Some of the briefs in favor of disclosure denigrate the secret ballot, and say that the reason all states made voting secret was to prevent fraud, not to protect privacy. However, a leading impetus for the secret ballot was to protect employees from the threat of losing their jobs if they voted for parties or candidates not favored by their employers.

Much of the material in the amici briefs on both sides is repetitious. Probably the most interesting brief on the side of the state is the brief of Susan Wagner, who explains that her initiative in Massachusetts to outlaw killing horses was the victim of a paid petitioning company that was circulating her petition and also a petition to ban same-sex marriage. Because the petition on horses was far more popular than the petition on marriage, the paid petitioning company that was circulating both petitions tricked many signers into signing the less popular measure, by the placement of the two petitions on clipboards. Susan Wagner filed this amicus jointly with the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus.

Probably the most interesting amici brief on the side of privacy is the one filed by the Committee for Truth in Politics and other groups, which shows how the existence of the internet has drastically changed the ability for anyone to learn a great deal of information about any individual. Putting the names and addresses of petition signers into a searchable database on the net is something very new in politics. If it spreads, it will surely make it more difficult to persuade many people to sign any kind of petition. Many individuals try to keep their residence address private.

The ACLU did not file an amicus brief in this case. When a case is in the U.S. Supreme Court, the national ACLU office decides whether or not to file an amicus brief. When this case had been in the 9th circuit, the Washington State ACLU had filed a brief on the side of the state, but there is no ACLU brief in this case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.