There’s no problem to solve
Published 12:01 am Thursday, March 3, 2011
What has become a perennial effort to make it harder to get citizen initiatives on the ballot is reaching a climax in Olympia. The Senate is expected to vote soon on a proposal that, even though it’s been watered down considerably, remains a solution in search of a problem.
Senate Bill 5297 is being pitched as a move toward greater transparency in the initiative process. In reality, it’s a thinly veiled effort by progressive interests, including unions, to erect barriers that hamper paid signature gathering for initiative and referendum petitions.
The original version was bold. It would have increased the filing fee for initiatives from $5 to $500, required signature-gathering businesses to register with the Secretary of State’s office, and allowed them to be prosecuted if their employees committed an act of fraud.
Those provisions were removed before the bill was approved Friday by the Ways & Means Committee, which voted to let the Secretary of State decide on filing fees.
Left in is a new rule barring signature gatherers from being within 15 feet of a store entrance or exit without the property owner’s permission, and a requirement that petitioners who are paid by the signature sign and print their address on the front of each petition sheet they submit — volunteers would only have to check a box. Paid signature gatherers would also have to list the name of the signature-gathering company that employs them.
Sheets with any of that information missing would be subject to a signature-by-signature check by the Secretary of State’s office, a silly consequence that really only punishes election workers.
The bill’s backers say it’s needed to counter a national increase in fraud cases involving petitions. Yet the only such case in Washington involves a former Service Employees International Union official who pleaded guilty last month to forging signatures last year on a petition for Initiative 1098, the income-tax measure.
Interestingly, the provisions requiring paid signature gatherers to sign and list their employer on the petition sheet doesn’t apply to those working on behalf of a union — even if it’s paying them. That raises constitutional problems, because the U.S. Supreme Court has rejected previous efforts to treat paid and volunteer signature gatherers differently. Given the budget crisis, the last thing the Legislature needs to do is pass a law likely to get the state thrown into court.
Washingtonians are an independent lot who value having a direct voice on important issues. Legislators and other players in Olympia should learn to respect that and stop trying to undermine the people’s initiative process.
