paid signature gatherers

Yesterday, Circuit Court Judge Mary McGowan issued an 11-page decision declaring Act 1413’s restrictions on initiative and referendum petitions to be unconstitutional and enjoining Arkansas Secretary of State Mark Martin from enforcing the 19-page law’s new “crushing” rules on paid and volunteer signature canvassers.

Act 1413 (Senate Bill 821) was passed at the behest of the state’s current duopoly gaming interests, who presumably wanted to foil any future attempts through ballot measures to permit competition. The law was offered officially as a way to fight fraud in the petition process, after a spate of allegations of fraud and forgery in several 2012 measures.

With exactly two weeks to go to collect the signatures required to put the recently-approved Bergamot Transit Village on the November ballot, opponents of the development will likely hire professional signature gatherers.

The decision comes at the end of the second weekend in the 30-day period that opponents of the 765,000 square foot project have had to gather signatures since the City Council officially approved the development on February 11 in a 4-to-3 vote. (“Santa Monica City Council Narrowly Approves Bergamot Transit Village,” February 5)

Oregon: The cost of a voter's signature

Wed, Jan 15 2014 — Source: KOIN

Professionals who gather signatures for ballot measures are common on statewide issues. They are less common on local issues, but one group is using the pros to collect enough voter sign-ups — and some are complaining about their tactics.

Since October, the Portlanders for Water Reform has been working to gather more than 29,000 signatures to put their measure on the ballot. The group wants a question on the ballot that will allow Portland voters to decide if an independent board should control the water and sewer departments instead of the city.

California Governor Jerry Brown vetoed the much maligned Assembly Bill 857 over the weekend, blocking for now the legislation that would have placed a number of unconstitutional restrictions on the collection of signatures for initiatives in the Golden State.

In his veto message, Governor Brown stated: “Requiring a specific threshold of signatures to be gathered by volunteers will not stop abuses by narrow special interests – particularly if ‘volunteer’ is defined with the broad exemptions as in this bill.”

Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed labor union-backed legislation Saturday that would have limited the use of paid signature gatherers to qualify statewide ballot initiatives in California.

Assembly Bill 857, by Assemblyman Paul Fong, D-Cupertino, would have required anyone seeking to qualify an initiative for the statewide ballot to use non-paid volunteers to collect at least 10 percent of signatures.

Read more here: here

The skirmish over the anti-initiative Assembly Bill 857 will reach a climax very soon, as California governor Jerry Brown is set to either sign or veto the bill within a week’s time.

The bill would place a restriction on all petition signature-gathering efforts, requiring 10% of the total verified signatures be collected by volunteers. This would mean more than 50,000 signatures would need to be gathered if a petition’s requirement was based on the last gubernatorial election (which puts the total requirement at just over 500,000).

Not content controlling every statewide elected office and both chambers of the legislature, California Democrats are now moving to cut off conservatives from the ballot as well.

The Washington Post’s Reid Wilson reports on a bill passed by the Assembly and Senate that Gov. Jerry Brown may sign this week:

Read More: here

California Gov. Jerry Brown has about a week and a half to decide whether to sign or veto legislation that would put substantial burdens on groups aiming to collect signatures for ballot initiatives, while exempting unions from the stringent new rules.

The measure, Assembly Bill 857, would require 10 percent of signatures for any given ballot initiative to be collected by volunteers, rather than by paid signature gatherers. The number of signatures supporters need to turn in is based on the number of votes in the last gubernatorial election; that means groups would have to rely on volunteers to gather a little more than 50,000 of the 504,760 valid signatures required to get an initiative on the ballot.

It is more or less a given that state legislators don’t like it when the public interferes with “their” lawmaking. This is even more so for legislators in California, where citizens of the Golden State have enjoyed the right to initiate and refer laws since 1911.

Three times in recent years, California legislators have passed facially unconstitutional, thinly-veiled machete attacks on citizen initiative and referendum rights, only to be dis-armed by Governor Jerry Brown’s veto pen.

Legislators in California are not fond of citizen initiatives and referendums, especially the Democrats who enjoy supermajorities in both legislative chambers. But a recent San Diego Union Tribune editorial puts the blame on “State labor unions,” who it accuses of “once again trying to twist California’s century-old initiative process to work in their favor” by pushing legislation to unconstitutionally block paid signature collectors.

A controversial bill aimed at toughening rules for petition signature operations in Oregon passed the House Friday on a 35-22 vote.

The largely party-line vote came after several Republican and minor-party activists complained that Senate Bill 154 could “criminalize” inadvertent errors and discourage people from mounting ballot measure campaigns in Oregon.

Those concerns were dismissed by the bill’s Democratic supporters, who used their majority in the House to win final legislative approval and send the measure to Gov. John Kitzhaber for his signature.

The Oregon Senate on Tuesday voted to toughen the regulation of signature gathering firms, despite the objections of Republicans and other critics who charged that it could have a chilling effect on ballot measure campaigns.

Critics said that Senate Bill 154, which passed on a party-line vote of 16 to 14, could subject canvassing firms to potential criminal penalties for inadvertent errors involving election laws.

Supporters, including a spokesman for Secretary of State Kate Brown, said that the measure only subjected firms that gather voter signatures to the same regulations that individual canvassers and the chief petitioners of ballot measures already must meet.

In recent years, California’s Democrat-dominated legislature has repeatedly attacked the state’s citizen initiative process. Now they’re baaaaaack.

In 2011, Golden State voters were twice saved by the pen of the state’s Democratic governor:

•         Jerry Brown vetoed Senate Bill 168, which made “productivity goals a crime,” pointing out that “per-signature payment is often the most cost-effective method for collecting the hundreds of thousands of signatures needed to qualify a ballot measure.”

A group trying to oust Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is again paying professionals to gather signatures from voters in a bid to force a recall election against the lawman.

Fundraising difficulties had prompted the group to stop using paid signature gatherers nearly two months ago and instead rely on only volunteers.

But recall organizer Lilia Alvarez says the paid signature gatherers resumed their work for her group Wednesday after contributors followed through on pledges to donate money.

Read More: Here