The California Assembly Elections Committee had been scheduled to hear SB 205 on June 21, but the hearing on that particular bill has been postponed until July 5. SB 205 makes it illegal to pay people to gather voter registrations, if the worker is paid on a per-signature basis. The reason for the postponement was that the bill’s author, Senator Lou Correa, could not attend the hearing.
Because the only remaining method in California for parties to remain on the ballot is to have at least 103,004 registered members, SB 205 will be very damaging to minor parties, especially the Libertarian Party, and the Peace & Freedom Party, because those two parties are now below the threshold. Those two parties, along with the Green Party, and the Coalition for Free & Open Elections (COFOE), have already notified the Assembly Elections Committee that they oppose the bill.
The bill is also damaging to newly qualifying parties, because they also need 103,004 registrations, or else 1,030,040 valid signatures, to get on the ballot. The only party that is making a substantial effort to qualify for 2012, so far, is Americans Elect, which is using the 1,030,040 petition method. No bill pending in the legislature makes it illegal to pay people on a per-signature basis to work on a petition to qualify a new party. However, a bill is moving ahead to make it illegal to pay people on a per-signature basis to work on an initiative, referendum or recall petition. That bill, SB 168, passed the Assembly Elections Committee on June 21. The Committee also passed SB 448, to force circulators of initiative, referendum and recall petitions to wear large buttons telling whether they are paid or not.
