Signature Gathering

Guess what? Electronic signatures aren’t new to California politics. In most counties of this state, records of voter registration are kept in electronic form. So when the clerk’s office checks to see if your pen-and-paper signature on an initiative petition matches the signature they have on file, the signature they’re comparing it with is an electronic one.

(cross posted at Fox & Hounds Daily)

If you think California governing system is badly broken, how should you vote in the governor’s race?

The likely nominees of each party, Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman, haven’t even bothered to offer an answer. (And for the record, Steve Poizner, despite being more specific about his policies than his rivals, has dodged this big question too).

(cross posted on Fox & Hounds Daily)

The world has been watching California’s political and fiscal troubles, and the world is blaming our direct democracy.

So wherever there’s talk of expanding the rights of people to decide on laws or constitutional amendments, a new criticism ring: Let’s not let our country/province/city become another California.

A few weeks ago, a statewide ballot initiative petition signed by a California voter named Michael Ni was delivered -- quietly and without fanfare -- to the clerk's office in San Mateo County.

Strange as it may sound, this is no exaggeration: Ni's John Hancock may reshape American politics forever.

(cross posted at Fox & Hounds Daily)

Petition circulators are refusing to work on the constitutional convention petitions for fear that a convention would limit the initiative process – and thus hurt their own livelihoods.

The circulators are right to be worried about their futures.

But they are worried about the wrong thing.

Ryan Nicholson, a circulator, has launched an ambitious new forum at http://www.petitiondatabase.com. The site has a little bit of everything, including space to find other circulators with whom you can carpool and a feature that allows circulators to share information on anyone who might be engaging in signature fraud. There also separate forum pages for circulators to share information from each state. Please check it out.

Oklahoma has been one of the worst states to practice direct democracy. The short, 90-day time period for gathering signatures is a particular problem, making it difficult for anyone but the richest initiative sponsors to qualify a measure. (Such tight time limits, I would argue, also encourage petition fraud, though I've not seen enough data to say so for sure).

Nevada appears on its way to adopt a distribution requirement for petition circulators: to qualify an initiative, signatures would have to gather a minimum number of signatures in all four of the state's Congressional districts. (This represents a change from earlier versions of the bill, which would have required signatures from all 42 Assembly districts).

A Nebraska businessman says that if the legislature won't reduce the number of signatures required to qualify a ballot initiative, he'll put an initiative on the ballot to do that.

Exhibit A is Nevada, where a bill would create a distribution requirement for signature gathering. That is, an initiative sponsor would have to get signatures equal to 10 percent of the vote in each of the state's 42 Assembly districts. That would effectively end ballot initiatives in the state. Such a process would be far too expensive and time-consuming for anyone but the wealthiest of the wealthy.