On July 14, the California Assembly passed SB 168, which prohibits paying people to circulate initiative, referendum and recall petitions on a per-signature basis. Similar laws in five other states have been declared unconstitutional. No Republican voted for the bill, and two Democrats voted against it. Now the bill goes to the Governor.
SB 205, a bill to outlaw paying voter registration workers on a per-registration basis, has a hearing in the Assembly Appropriations Committee on August 17.
It’s not hard to see how the tactics of companies like APC and proponents like Ackerman could invoke a knee jerk response like this from our elected officials. I’m sure that when Arno put the statewide voter file online with no password required, it brought up memories of Congressperson Giffords. Not to mention that it would be easy to jump to the conclusion that they are staffing their campaign with recruits from the local soup kitchens and methadone clinics. Unfortunately, the government response is to pass legislation which infringes on the rights of all of us. The “badge bill” is another example. What’s next, a scarlet letter? If you are in California, and care about free speech, call the governor, and ask him to veto both of these.
Good points. Ironically SB 168 does not apply to petitions to create a new party, nor to petitions for an independent candidate, nor to petitions to place a candidate on a primary ballot.
No initiative has made the ballot without paid signature gathers since 1972! I hope this law is taken to court and struck down very soon!
WAKE UP FOLKS.
ALL INCUMBENT GERRYMANDER ROBOT PARTY HACKS since about 1992 have become EVIL OLIGARCHS — wanting ONLY to stay in power by ANY means necessary/available.
P.R. and App.V.
The top 2 primary and the new gerrymander for both houses of the CA legislature can not come soon enough — even with their major defects.
I guess the California legislature will soon be outlawing paid campaign staff members for their own campaigns, or perhaps only paid campaign staff members who are working on campaigns to pass a propositions, initiatives, or recalls.
Perhaps they could outlaw paid campaign staff for presidential candidates.
Why limit the idea to people gathering signatures?
Regarding the people in the public currently signing various petitions in California these days, I’d say from 30% to 40% do it, in great part, just to help out the guy/gal who is obviously trying to make some cash.
Democrats voting for a “job killer” bill?
BTW, how about all those folks who come to my door raising funds for the various political/environmental groups? Or are we suppose to think they’re all out there doing that for their health? Them and the Kirby vacuum boys.
The paid petition industry never policed itself and now will see its little cottage industry go away in California. The is modeled after Oregon’s law and that law was upheld in the 9th circuit. So alas, the petition coordinators will be out and temp agencies will come in and some professionalism will be back. Having seen Oregon circulators versus California circulators it is like night and day.
Response to tool: Working under this ban in Nebraska had the effect of tripling the cost of a recall for the mayor last fall. Lack of incentive in a short time frame almost prevented a popular issue from making the ballot. Temps were NOT the answer! If it were not for deep pockets, it would have failed because of this one restriction. Bernbeck v Gale is challenging this and residency restrictions.
Will the Democracy forces in CA get their act together and do a REAL Democracy constitutional amendment petition to put the EVIL robot party hacks OUT of Business.
SELF enforcing language –
ballot access
const amdts
laws
referendum
recalls
NO statutory loopholes for the EVIL gerrymander oligarchs to play games with.
The W-A-R for REAL Democracy continues – 6000 plus years — CA Front.
#6 While I don’t support the law, I certianly agree. Additionally, it would create some modicum of acountabillty as to the flow of money. People who were not paid (cooprdinators and circulators) wuold be given the option of a labor board claim, as opposed to having to sue several corporations in a contract dispute. Arno for example, routinely shifts money around in multiple corporations. See California SOS website under:
Arno Political Consultants
Election Systems Inc.
Capitol Links
Direct Voice
Even in the event of a judgement, the abillity to collect is made much more difficult by these practices.
“So alas, the petition coordinators will be out and temp agencies will come in and some professionalism will be back.”
LOL! Petitioners from temp agencies tend to be bottom-of-the-barrel type of people. Any petition coordinator knows that it is a waste to hire people like that.
“Having seen Oregon circulators versus California circulators it is like night and day.”
Some of the same petition cirulators who work in California also work in Oregon.
When homeless drunks sit in front of stores representing your cause and the coordinators think it is fine then we might as well hire illegal aliens. In effect when people circulating petitions are making less than minimum wage then the industry is ripping off the circulators. The coordinators throw it all against the wall and see what sticks. Just like hiring a ton of illegals at $5.00 an hour. Now if they have to pay an hourly rate then the circulators have to be of some quality to make it worthwhile to keep that person. So the quality circulators will eventually get paid better. Quality circulators wont have compete with scumbags.
Your referece to scumbags goes all the way to the top (at least at APC). Arno routinely suggests tactics to his vendors. His latest memo involved swarming “Harry Potter lines”. Just what a parent needs on a family outing, a gaggle of intoxicated derelicts,incapable of polysylabic speech on a good day, accosting the defensless moviegoers. I still don’t think hourly pay is the answer. Has anyone ever had the ‘pleasure’ of hiring workers through Labor Ready?
“tool Says:
July 18th, 2011 at 3:23 pm
When homeless drunks sit in front of stores representing your cause and the coordinators think it is fine then we might as well hire illegal aliens.”
There are plenty of professional petitioners who do not fit this description of yours. Sure, the coordinators do hire bums sometimes, but these people are not the ones who collect the bulk of the signatures. I don’t know anyone who is any good as a petition circulator who falls into the the “drunk homeless bum” category.
“In effect when people circulating petitions are making less than minimum wage then the industry is ripping off the circulators. The coordinators throw it all against the wall and see what sticks. Just like hiring a ton of illegals at $5.00 an hour.”
I certainly don’t like it when petition coordinators pay low-ball payrates – particularly when a petition proponent is paying them enough where they don’t have to do this but they do it anyway because they want to keep big fat overrides for themselves, but petition circulators rarely make less than minimum wage, particularly if they are any good. If I’m on a petition drive and there is any point where I’m only making minimum wage or less then I’ll either try to find another area to work or I will quit working on that campaign and go work somewhere else or maybe take a break until they pay increases.
“Now if they have to pay an hourly rate then the circulators have to be of some quality to make it worthwhile to keep that person. So the quality circulators will eventually get paid better. Quality circulators wont have compete with scumbags.”
Moving to an hourly pay system will not reduce any of these problems. If anything, it will increase them. I worked on a petition drive in Nebraska a few years ago where there were several initiatives going on at the same time. Most of the initiatives were paying by the signature but there was one initiative that was paying by the hour (even though no law at the time required this). No petitioner that was any good wanted to work on the petition that was paying by the hour so that petition was stuck with novice and low-level circulators and it ended up failing to make the ballot. There petitions that paid by the signature all got enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.
The hourly pay system is horrible for the petition business, and it is also horrible for the public as a whole because it creates new beauracratic hoops for the petition coordinators to jump through and it also creates a disinsentive for petition circulators to work hard. This is not just bad for the petition business, it is also bad for the populace as a whole because it is going to make ballot access more difficult which is going to lead to less choices for the public.
Interesting when, if signed by the governor, it would take effect.
Was it aimed at the following?
———————————————-
AP–
SAN FRANCISCO — Amazon.com Inc. says the California Attorney General’s Office has approved its petition for a referendum that would let voters decide whether to overturn a new law that forces online retailers to collect sales taxes in the state.
The law makes online retailers collect California sales taxes by expanding what it means to have a physical presence in the state. The requirement now kicks in if an online retailer has a related company, such as a marketing arm, or affiliates in California.
The law is projected to help California collect an additional $200 million annually. Amazon says its referendum aims to support jobs and investment in the state.
To bring its measure before Californians in the next statewide vote in February, Seattle-based Amazon must gather over 500,000 signatures by late September.
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Hey, just a thought. This bill, SB 168, has passed the legislature. If the governor signs it soon, would it not immediately stop Americans Elect in their tracks, still needing several hundred thousand more signatures?
I see no “effective date” in the wording. Hence, would it not become law the very day it is signed?
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/sen/sb_0151-0200/sb_168_bill_20110715_enrolled.html
#15 The consensus around the industry is that it would take effect January 1 2012. I’m sure there will be a legal challenge, so if I had to guess, and if it is upheld by the courts, I would esitmate several years. A first year law student should be able to get an injunction while the litigation is pending.
#14 While SB 168 would apply to referendum campaign’s like that of Amazon, it wouldn’t apply to Amazon’s because the effective date of the law would be after Amazon’s deadline for signatures (90 days from when the bill was signed into law).
As Rick notes in #16, even without any delays due to litigation, the effective date of SB 168 if signed would be January 1, 2012. In general, bills in the California legislature become effective on January 1st of the following year, unless they include a later effective date within them or they include an urgency clause to take effect sooner (which requires a two-thirds vote).
#15 SB 168 also wouldn’t apply to the Americans Elect petition drive, regardless of effective dates, because the bill is written to only apply to initiative, referendum and recall petitions. Its restrictions don’t apply to petitions to qualify a political party or to petitions to qualify candidates.
I have seen hourly petitioners in Colorado, Nebraska, Nevada, etc, and they were bottom of the barrel.
At the same time, it makes things very expensive for proponents. Temps are unreliable and often don’t produce, so the hourly rate has to be low; yet if it is low, good circulators won’t work for that. If it is high, the proponent is wasting a lot of money on non-producers. If there are different rates for different people they are opening themselves to the charge that they are really circumventing the law and paying per signature.
BTW I have also tried hiring petitioners from a temp agency. This was on a candidate petition in a non-initiative state. It was a huge waste of time and money.
This law has only one purpose, to keep things from making the ballot because right now Democrats control state government and can get what they want from the legislative process. Additionally, they have union manpower on any initiatives that they may want to get on the ballot in the future. This is purely partisan politics between the two duopoly parties. It has absolutely nothing to do with cleaning up the petition industry; that’s just a ruse.
I’m sure that when Arno put the statewide voter file online with no password required,
URL?
apcdata.com The Secretary of State’s enforcement division made him correct it. When the investigators queried the names of various celeberties, and politicians, they saved screen shots for evidence in the event he pulls a similar stunt in the future. His goal was to give file access to circulators in order to quell the complaints about validity skimming. Additionally the online file is significantly inaccurae and, what a suprise, the error skewes in Arno’s favor, according to several people who have taken signatures to the local Registrar of Voters. Arno’s memos of late have degegeneated into incessant pitiful whining about his validaion costs. His duplicate reports are based on a percentage formula, not hard counts. Any vendor who turns in final signatures without being paid in full, can expect the same treatment as they received on ‘Electricity’ and ‘Tobacco’. Rumor has it that he has a second file purchased county by county, and that it is accurate. If this is true, his online file is nothing more than a prop he is using to facilitate his validity skimming. This is the same pattern of conduct Arno demonstrated in the several campaigns preceeding his bankruptcy in the ’90’s. First it was alleged low validity, then it was alleged duplicates, and finally, just like ‘Tobacco’, he didn’t pay even the undisputed invoices. If you know people in the industry, ask them, don’t just take my word for it. It is my fear that a lot of people are going to get cheated in the end on this, while Arno galavants off to Eastern Europe with his ill gotten gains. I hope I am wrong, and Arno has recently developed some minimal degree of honesty and integrity, but at his age, and with his track record, it doesn’t seem verey likely.