Thursday, July 22, 2004

Paid petition signature collection considered harmful Vote Smart Florida , a group formed by the Florida Chamber of Commerce, has put out news of the dark side process of collecting signatures to put proposed Constitutional amendments on the ballot.  With a combination of hidden cameras, interviewing petition collectors and signers, they have uncovered practices such as collectors encouraging voters to sign a petition multiple times and giving out incorrect information about the proposed amendments. Group cites deceptive petition procedures (Tallahassee Democrat) Panhandle peition signatures suspicious  (Pensacola News Journal) The Pensacola News Journal article reports that over 1300 forged signatures were found in the Panhandle region. I've witnessed the process at work.  There were ads all over campus here at Florida State that encouraged people to make money by collecting signatures.  For most of the spring it was impossible to walk around campus without running into at least one person collecting signatures. I tried to avoid the collectors as much as possible.  Of the ones that I didn't manage to avoid, I was roundly unimpressed with their knowledge of the issue they were collecting signatures for.  For instance, a person collecting signatures for the minimum wage petition claimed that Florida has the lowest minimum wage in the country (actually, we are one of eight states that does not have a state law on the matter, and the majority of the remaining states opt to mirror the federal minimum wage).  When I challenged her on that statement, she insisted it was true.  After arguing with her a little bit, I asked her where she was getting her information from.  She said it was from the people paying her.  (She was getting paid 50 cents per signature.  I don't know for sure who was paying here, but I believe it was a company specializing in signature collection). I did not witness attempts to get people to sign a petition multiple times, but as I've said, I wanted nothing to do with those collecting signatures, so it could have been going on here. The free market side of me does not like the idea of banning they paying of people to collect signatures.  However, the pragmatic side of me does not oppose the idea.  As a whole, I am not a fan of the initiative process.  The default for a referendum that makes the ballot is for it to get passed.  Only if groups make very active (and often costly) efforts to defeat it will an amendment fail.  Our state constitution has items in it that are not fitting for a constitution because of this. Disclosure:  I did sign petitions for the bullet train amendment and the medical liability amendment.  In both instances the collectors were members of the groups sponsoring the amendment, not employees of a petition signature collection company.  Note that the bullet train amendment repeals a previously passed amendment. Florida Referendums 2004, Politics comment []11:15:16 AM   trackback []