On May 31, the California Assembly passed AB 421 by 60-18. It outlaws paying initiative circulators on a per-signature basis, but it makes an exception for initiatives in which the backers are able to collect 5% of the needed signatures with volunteer petitioners.
It also changes the ballot description for referenda, so that the ballot is less confusing. Referenda questions on ballots of all jurisdictions are often confusing, because “yes” and “no” are inherently ambiguous. A voter may not know whether “yes” means “Yes, repeal the law”, or “Yes, keep the law.”
Sounds like a good bill.
“It outlaws paying initiative circulators on a per-signature basis, but it makes an exception for initiatives in which the backers are able to collect 5% of the needed signatures with volunteer petitioners.”
What?
another anti-democracy machination by CA minority rule gerrymander oligarchs.
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P–A–T
You rang?
The part about banning pay per signature should be declared unconstitutional.
Why? It’s a dirty industry practice that just makes astroturf campaign fraud way worse. The rationale for ballot initiatives was that it would present an avenue for legislation that has a groundswell of popular support but is blocked by big money interests from passing through the legislature to have an avenue to pass into law. It was a very flawed premise to begin with, and as I think I would have predicted if I was alive at that time, it certainly has not worked out that way.
In reality, big money interests hire astroturf lobbying firms which hire a bunch of people, including homeless street hustlers and shady carnival barker types who can’t even get hired in any other crooked traveling sales type job, to go out motivated primarily or usually only by greed to annoy people going about their business in public places or trying to work or relax at home, and tell as many lies as they can get away with to as many gullible suckers as it takes to qualify an initiative. Success or failure at this stage has a lot more to do with whether the big money interests behind any given proposal have enough money and throw enough of it at that particular issue than how popular or unpopular it is. I have no idea how many of the people signing even read the full text, much less fully study it or understand it. My guess would be probably less than 10%.
Once the initiative qualifies, it’s once again a purely financial battle of lying manipulative pro and con advertisements and propaganda campaigns. The vast majority of voters are not trained to study and understand legislation, have it extremely low on their priority list, or in most cases both. How is this better than the legislative process, as bad as that is? If anything, it’s even worse and more corrupt.
The best solution would be to get rid of initiatives altogether and apply the common sense concept of division of labor. We pay legislators to legislate, just like we pay auto mechanics to fix cars, surgeons to perform surgery, garbagemen to take trash to the dump, firemen to put out fires, etc.
Any of those professions have any number of incompetent people who should lose their jobs. When it comes to legislators, that’s why we have elections. I don’t want to have to fix cars or toilets in my spare time. I really don’t want to smell what would happen if all my neighbors had to fix their own toilets, or share the road with cars they had to fix themselves. Granted, some people enjoy those things as hobbies. That’s fine. When it comes to legislation, such people can write proposed legislation, be volunteer lobbyists, volunteer on a campaign, run for legislature, etc. They can become paid lobbyists or office staff.
At least, there are some professionals paid to review proposed legislation and vote it up or down who can be fired if they do a terrible enough job. Who do I fire if the majority of distracted, lazy, busy, and/or stupid voters got swindled into approving a terrible law without reading the fine print? And how would I go about firing them? There’s no way to do it. It’s not their job, and not anything they asked to have to do. Most people have zero interest in being volunteer legislators in their spare time, and when forced to do it anyway, do an even worse job than the bozos who get elected to do it for a living.
Short of that, banning paying signature harvesting altogether would at least give the idiotic “grassroots swell of public support” theory of citizen initiatives another chance to fail. Unfortunately, idiots in robes have interpreted arcane readings of constitutions to force allowing signature harvesting on states which want to ban the pernicious practice. Hopefully, future judges and justices will reverse such idiocy.
At this point, banning pay by the signature is one of the common sense reforms to clean up the worst of the worst in this dirtiest and most corrupt of public nuisances flying under the radar as legal or even civic minded. There are many others. But since just how nasty and filthy the business practices in this so called industry, as well as many of the individuals they hire can be, is very little known, the festering pile of slimy ooze just keeps piling up and stinking worse and worse as time goes on.
It’s overdue for some safety measures. Banning pay by signature is just one of many that can and should be implemented.
I gotta agree with Andy. All this will do is place restrictive measures towards third-party and independent petitions, which already struggle with lawsuits by the major parties and the inability to mobilize due to our culture towards them. It’s often to the point where it’s their only chance to have any say at all. This is more of a punishment to the little guy while rewarding the big guys yet again.
I do like the changes in the ballot initiative referendum, but I do not trust the Democrats with the ban as this will likely be a power grab. We need to start being more constitutionally aware.
Perhaps the people behind third party and independent petition efforts should spend more time organizing a well developed network of well trained volunteers ahead of becoming third parties or independent candidates. For example , issue lobbying and pressure groups or well organized caucuses within major parties .
Then when they secede to become third parties or independent candidates they will have the resources to get on the ballot with their own local resident volunteer members, and to run candidates with the credentials , funding, and popular support to gain significant media coverage and debate access. Whining for the equivalent of government candidate and party welfare and astroturfing fake support by piggybacking off the road clown carnival barker shows of astroturf ballot initiative qualification would then no longer be a necessity or concern for them.