On April 24, the California Senate passed SB 205, which makes it illegal to pay voter registration workers on a per-registration card basis. All the newly-qualifying parties in California since 1970 have qualified for the ballot by persuading voters (equal to 1% of the last gubernatorial vote) to register into the party. All of these efforts have involved paying workers a certain amount of money for each voter registration for that party. If this bill is signed into law, that method for getting on the ballot will be illegal. SB 205 passed on a party-line vote, with all Democrats voting “yes” and all Republicans voting “no.”
On May 9, the California Senate passed SB 168, which makes it illegal to pay circulators on a per-signature basis, if they are working on initiative, referendum, or recall petitions. On the same day, the Senate passed SB 448, which forces circulators of those kind of petitions to wear a button that tells whether they are paid or volunteer. These bills also passed on party line votes, with all Democrats voting “yes” and all Republicans voting “no.”
SB 448 did pass on a straight party-line vote (25-15), but two Democrats (Simitian and Calderon) abstained from the vote on SB 168. While they may have just left the Senate chambers for reasons completely unrelated to the bill and felt no need to make a late vote on a bill that already passed, that seems unlikely given that they did take part in the day’s other floor votes. Does anyone know why these two senators didn’t vote on SB 168?
When did the gerrymander MONSTERS in CA become totally party hack robot EVIL ???
P.R. and App.V. — to end the rule of the robots.
This Respresents a classic case of voter suppression. We can only hope that the courts will put an injunction on this when it becomes law later this year. The signature gathering community must come to grips with the fact that the Democrats in California and other Public Employee Union dominated states view the initiative gatherers and the initiaitive process itself with hostility. Being that it is too difficult to end the initiative system, they therefore constructed rules to give themselves a huge advantage in gathering. It is time that they understand that there is no win in placating the Democrats on this issue and that their own survival rests on backing measures to redress the imbalance of power in Sacramento as well as other Blue State capitals with an initiative system accross the country.
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