Califonia Assemblyman Tim Donnelly’s AB 1117 will not pass this year. The bill would provide that statewide initiative petitions would be shown on the Secretary of State’s web page. Then, anyone who wants to circulate such a petition could print blank petition forms from that web page. The bill had passed the Assembly earlier, but it didn’t pass the Senate Appropriations Committee. Opponents of the idea say the practice would make fraud easier, because an unscrupulous person might print the cover page of two different initiatives, and collect signatures from people who thought they were signing for one initiative, but their signatures would be attached to some other initiative.

If California permitted statewide initiatives on 8.5 inch by eleven inch paper, that problem would be minimized. However, California statewide initiatives must be on legal size paper. Most home printers can’t print documents on legal size paper.

On September 10, the California Senate passed AB 857, a bill to require that statewide initiative petitions are not valid unless at least 10% of the signatures were collected by unpaid volunteers. The bill has been amended since it passed the Assembly, so it needs to return to the Assembly for another vote. The legislature will adjourn for the year on September 12 or September 13.

If the bill is enacted and signed into law, it is certain that it will be challenged in court. In 1988, in Meyer v Grant, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Colorado’s law banning paid circulators. The decision was unanimous. The basis for the decision is that banning paid circulators makes it very difficult for initiatives to qualify. If AB 857 required 1% or 2% of the signatures to be collected by volunteers, it could probably be upheld, but it seems unlikely that 10% will survive a court test. The bill originally required 20%, but on September 6 was amended to 10%.