Proposed initiative regulations unfairly punish paid signature gatherers

THE Legislature is once again considering bills to regulate signature gathering for voter initiatives: Senate Bill 5297 and House Bill 1668. These bills contain things good and bad, and some not-so-good motives.

The supporters say they favor the initiative process and want to make it clean. This page agrees with that sentiment. Their bills, however, are a collection of things to make ballot initiatives more difficult. And that suggests the legislators' intent is to restrict direct democracy.

Their bills are particularly hostile to signature gathering for pay — a method that has allowed voters to decide many issues. Not all of the proposals have been good, but voters have done a fair job of sorting them out.

The bills would require people paid by signature-gathering companies to register each year with the state, and separately for each ballot measure they support. But their activity — petitioning the government — is constitutionally protected. That they are making a living at it does not subtract from their right to do it.

The parts of the bills that would treat paid people differently from unpaid people are unconstitutional under current case law, said Katie Blinn, the state's co-director of elections.

She also said Washington has had little problem with signature fraud, which is the problem these bills ostensibly are trying to solve.

Last year there was only one case — a woman collecting signatures for Initiative 1098, the proposed income tax. But she would not have been considered a paid gatherer under these bills because she was being paid by her employer, not the initiative sponsor.

She was caught only because she signed her petition sheet with her real name. In Washington, such a signature is requested but not required. It should be required, or else the signatures should not count — but the two bills do not do this.

The bills would raise the initiative filing fee from $5, a figure that goes back to the late 1800s, to $500, with $450 to be refunded on any initiative that makes the ballot. The idea of $500 is to discourage frivolous measures, to help pay for the cost of state's attorneys to write the legal language and defend the ballot title in court.

That argument makes sense, but it does not salvage the bills as a whole. They are punitive and should be rejected.