On May 10, the California Assembly Elections Committee passed and amended AB 469. As originally presented, the bill shrinks the time for candidates to collect signatures in lieu of the filing fee, for Congress and state office, by 15 days; it also eliminates the ability to get more signatures after the petition has been checked. In response to the testimony of the Peace & Freedom Party representative, C. T. Weber, the committee passed the bill but amended it to lower the number of signatures needed to avoid the filing fee.
The statewide petition drops from 10,000 to 7,000; the U.S. House and State Senate petition drops from 3,000 to 2,000; the Assembly petition drops from 1,500 to 1,000. The bill is sponsored by Assemblymember Jim Cooper (D-Elk Grove) and was initiated by county election officials.
All these petitioning barriers are violations of the First Amendment, but so long as the Courts sanction ballot censorship it should be pointed out that these petitions could be conducted online on state election authority servers. The signature’s validity could be verified almost instantly and feedback to person and/or petition circulator of the fact and the total count.
This regime of petitioning to have one’s name printed by the state ballot monopoly serves no other purpose than to keep people from voting for candidates other than those of the privileged self-entrenched parties.
California has it backwards. It should set petition requirements based on the electorate, and then a fee in lieu of petition that is the equivalent to the number of signatures collected at a certain rate by a minimum wage worker. It is ridiculous to set a fee based on the salary for the office.
In the gubernatorial election in 2014, there were 7,513,972 voters. If the petition requirement was 0.1%, then for statewide offices, 7514 signatures would be needed. 7514 signatures at 10 minutes per signature would require 1252.33 hours. 1252.33 hours at $10.50 per hour is $13,150. A candidate could use a combination of the two: For every signature short of 7514, they could pay $1.75.
The average senate seat would require 188 signatures, or a fee of $329. The average assembly seat would be 94 signatures or a fee of $165.
Richard:
As it currently stands, does this bill still have the clause to prohibit adding further signatures after submitting the petition a first time? As far as I’m concerned reducing the state-wide petitions by 30% and the district ones by 1/3rd while taking 2 weeks off the front of an 8-week petitioning period {25%} (which will start on December 29, 2017 for the 2018 June General election) seems to be a fairly reasonable trade. Realistically, how many signatures have candidates in the past EVEN COLLECTED during the first week overlapping the holidays as it does. So even-though each signature is still worth well under $1.00 at least this change will somewhat increase their value to the candidate.
Note to Jim Riley:
On many issues you’ve commented on over the years, I’ve either agreed with (in general) or at least not dis-agreed. However on this one, I really can’t agree on any element noted. In 2018, the filing fee for ALL state-wide offices including Senator Feinstein’s seat will be under $4,000. By your calculation, it would increase around 3 1/2 times higher than that. Additionally, if you’re not aware of it in the last legislative session, Governor Brown foolishly signed a bill increasing the minimum wage in California to $15.00/hr. in less than 5 years. Which means that for the Filing fee to not go up any more than your current proposal of $13,150. the 2018 Governor’s vote would need to decline to slightly over 5.26 million. Then again the way voting has lagged in California since 2010, that might not be such an unexpected event to occur. With a more reasonable vote of just 10 million a state-wide candidate in 2022, would see an increase in the filing fee to around $25,000.00 (more or less 6 times higher)!!
Tying it to the minimum wage ensures that the fee increases with inflation. A $15 minimum wage makes each signature worth $2.50. There was ballot crowding in the Senate race (32 counties). It is arguably too cheap to get on the statewide ballot.
And remember that my method would let a party have a full slate of assembly candidates for the same cost as one statewide office. The signatures for 80 candidates would be the same, albeit somewhat harder to collect because they must be from each district. The 94 signature is something that an individual candidate could do, or he could pay the much smaller filing fee.
Hi, I just made a donation.
Since we don’t have a party card yet, I used my personal one.
Could you please instead the e-mail address listed below, change it to: americanprogressiveparty2016@gmail.com ?
Thank you.
Why in 2017 can’t electronic signatures be collected instead of paper ballots that are then scanned into an electronic system and then entered into a database? The requirement for paper is a huge waste of paper. When will an elected official in CA proposed a bill that includes this incredibly efficient, effective democratically supportive, and practical approach to collecting signatures?