On March 11, the Idaho Senate passed SB 1108, which requires statewide initiative proponents to obtain a substantial number of signatures in each of half the legislative districts in the state. All seven Democrats in the State Senate voted against it, but only three Republicans voted against it: Senators Clifford Bayer, Bob Nonini, and Steve Vick. The Senate vote was 25-10. However, at the hearing earlier, the public testimony had been overwhelming against the bill; see this description of the groups and individuals who testified on each side. Thanks to Paul Jacob for this news.
This is another example of Republicans trying to stifle the petitioning process. There are other states where the Democrats have attacked the process. It seems that attempts to make the petitioning process more difficult generally come from which ever party has more power between the Republicans and Democrats.
Gathering signatures by legislative district is very difficult, because most people do not know in which legislative district they are.
Also, it can be very difficult to find locations where you ask the general public to sign petitions, because most states do not recognize that people even have the right to go out to places where the public has access to for the purpose of asking passers by to sign petitions. The only states which generally recognize any legal protections for petition circulators are California, Washington, Massachusetts, and, to a lesser extent, Colorado (I say this because these rights have been under extreme attack in Colorado over the last few years). It is more difficult for petitioners to find locations where they can ask people to sign petitions in the rest of the states. A legislative district distribution requirement will require petitioners to go out to rural districts to get signatures, and it is generally a lot more difficult to find locations for signature gathering in small towns/rural areas than in more densely population places. Petitioners can go door-to-door for signature gathering, but this does not always work out well, because there are some places where door-to-door petitioning is not good, or does not work at all. There are rural areas where the homes are too far apart, and/or there are long drive ways, and/or fences around the homes. There are some places where there are gated communities where security will throw you out if you try to petition there, and that’s if you can even get inside. There are other places where there are aprartment buildings or condominiums where the doors to get inside the buildings are locked, and they may have security as well. There are other places where the police misapply door-to-door peddling ordinances to petitioning, so petitioners can get run out or even arrested even if they go door-to-door.
Door-to-door petitioning is generally a lot slower than petitioning at a public location, so petitioners are usually going to gather less signatures per hour if they go door-to-door vs. being in a public venue. Also, door-to-door petitioning is only good during certain times of the day. Door-to-door is pretty worthless Monday-Friday before 4 PM (I wouldn’t even bother going out before 3 PM for door-to-door Monday-Friday), and you really should not knock on anyone’s door past 9 PM. Door-to-door petitioning is more fruitful on the weekends, but even then it’s not good to start too early on the weekends because a lot of people who work Monday-Friday sleep in on the weeks, plus there are a lot who attend church on Sunday mornings. I’d say start around 12 PM or 1 PM on Saturday and Sunday, and then you can go until 9 PM.
Now contrast this with petitioning at places where the public gathers, and you can really gather signatures at any time during the day. Sure, there are certain times of the day that tend to be less productive than others, but still, there are a lot more times of the day where you can gather a lot more signatures at public places than you can by going door-to-door.
One advantage to going door-to-door is that you can average a higher validity rate than by gathering signatures at public venues, however, door-to-door petitioning has draw backs as well. If you need a lot of signatures quickly, and if you have to go door-to-door because you can’t get access to public venues, then you need a lot more petition circulators, both volunteers and paid petitioners. Also, for the paid petitioners, you need to be able to pay them a higher pay rate if they go door-to-door, due to the average volume of their signature gathering being lower.
So if somebody says, “You can go out to rural districts to collect signatures, just go door-to-door,” or “So what if you can’t go to any public locations to get signatures, you can just go door-to-door to get them,” this opens up a whole new set of problems.
I suspect that it is pretty difficult to reach 6% statewide without reaching 6% in half the state.
The mean district collection rate is obviously 6%, and this would require the median rate be at least 6% as well.
One more point here, and that is that if petitioners have to go door-to-door due to a lack of public venues for signature gathering, this makes it a lot more difficult – or even impossible – for people with disabilities (such as the handicapped, the elderly, or people with knee or back problems) to engage in petition signature gathering, because it is too difficult – or impossible – for them to walk door-to-door (which can include having to walk up steps, etc…). So this disenfranchieses a lot of people from even taking part in this aspect of the political process.
If a voter is disenfranchised because they can’t solicit signatures on a petition, aren’t they also disenfranchised if paid professional solicitors from out of state can solicit signatures?
Imagine if you could be paid by George Soros or the Koch Brothers or Nanny Bloomberg to vote in an election in another state, and could be paid based on performance such as the number of votes you cast, wouldn’t that disenfranchise the citizen voters of the state (through vote dilution).
I don’t think you can classify soliciting signatures as being part of the exercise of the electoral franchise, without putting you out of business.
“Jim Riley Says:
March 14th, 2013 at 8:29 pm
If a voter is disenfranchised because they can’t solicit signatures on a petition, aren’t they also disenfranchised if paid professional solicitors from out of state can solicit signatures?”
This is an aburd statement. Hiring petition circulators is division of labor. Some people value time more than money, so they’d prefer to donate money to hire somebody to gather signatures than to go out and collect the signatures themselves.
Also, what difference does it make where the petition circulator is from? Some petition circulators may regularly reside in a state, others may not. How is this relevant to the petition? The people being asked to sign it will either decline to sign it, or they will not sign it.
If you want to ban about-of-state petition circulators, then how about also banning out of state journalists who cover politics? After all, somebody may be influenced by an out-of-state journalist. How about banning out-of-state campaign managers? How about requiring that petitions only be printed on paper that was manufactured in state, and that the trees that went in to making the paper had to be cut down in state, and also, how about requiring the ink on the petitions to be made in state, and manufactured in state? How about requiring that the pens used to sign the petitions be manufactured in state? Also, how about passing a law that bans people from out of state from even talking about politics?
Why not do all of this stuff? Because it is UNCONSTITUTIONAL and IRRATIONAL, that’s why.
If anything, banning out-of-state petition circulators disenfranshises voters, because it means that less people will get the opportunity to sign petitions. Most candidates and issues would not make the ballot if not for the ability to hire out-of-state petitioning talent, and therefore, many voters would be disenfranchised because there’d be less choice on the ballot.
Free speech is free speech. A person does not give up their right to free speech when the cross state lines.
When I referred to disenfranchising people from circulating petitions, I was talking about the issue of lack of access to locations where people can gather petition signatures. Anyone who has ever gathered petition signatures should know what I’m talking about here. If you can’t get adequate locations for signature gathering and you are force to go door-to-door, this hinders the ability of handicapped people, as well as the elderly, and people with knee or back problems, from gathering petition signatures, because they have a hard time walking door-to-door. I believe that anyone who wants to gather signatures on petitions should be able to do it.