Although much focus during the health crisis has been on the difficulty of petitioning, a related issue is that if a petition is submitted, it is now more difficult for election officials to check the validity of the signatures. See this story, over a San Jose, California city initiative. The signatures were submitted to the city clerk. The city clerk counted the sheets, gave the proponents a receipt for the number of pages, and turned the petition over to the county registrar of voters.
But, in the process, several hundred sheets never reached the registrar, and were hopelessly lost. The county registrar did a random sample of the petition and determined that it just barely didn’t qualify. Then the proponents learned, and proved, that some of the sheets had been lost. Now every signature on the petition must be checked. There are almost 100,000 raw signatures. The county is suing the city to recover at least part of the cost of checking the signatures. The story reveals that it will cost approximately $1,000,000 to check the petition.
Hand signed petitions for both candidates and initiatives have become an archaic, and costly nuisance for all involved. Electronic signatures should be allowed everywhere and in all cases. Given that many petition drives cannot be completed without paid petition collectors, even for the most well organized candidates and issue groups, election authorities could do both themselves and petition collectors a big favor by accepting filing fees in lieu of petition signatures.
REAL PR = less need for ANY inits —
ie actual *responsive* legis bodies —
who will put *controversial* stuff on ballots —
if *too hot* to enact in the body.