On September 10, the California Senate passed AB 857, a bill to require that statewide initiative petitions are not valid unless at least 10% of the signatures were collected by unpaid volunteers. The bill has been amended since it passed the Assembly, so it needs to return to the Assembly for another vote. The legislature will adjourn for the year on September 12 or September 13.
If the bill is enacted and signed into law, it is certain that it will be challenged in court. In 1988, in Meyer v Grant, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Colorado’s law banning paid circulators. The decision was unanimous. The basis for the decision is that banning paid circulators makes it very difficult for initiatives to qualify. If AB 857 required 1% or 2% of the signatures to be collected by volunteers, it could probably be upheld, but it seems unlikely that 10% will survive a court test. The bill originally required 20%, but on September 6 was amended to 10%.
Sue for $$$$$$$ DAMAGES.
Bankrupt the govt morons involved.
How about a bill that requires state legislators to be unpaid volunteers?
California is sucking even more these days <:p
Does this bill require that the 10% come from the raw collected numbers or the final validated numbers? If it is the former it is a lesser burden, a burden none the less. If it is the latter, it would seem to be a very unnecessary and undue burden.
What about people who’d prefer to donate money to petition drives instead of donating their time and labor that comes with collecting signatures? What if a person works full time and does not have the time to collect volunteer signatures, or what if they have health problems and can’t go out and collect petition signatures?
It appears the 10% applies to the number of valid signatures required. I don’t think the number of raw signatures makes any difference. So if a petition needs 1,000,000 valid signatures, at least 100,000 valid signatures must have been collected by unpaid persons.