Bill to regulate initiative signature gatherers unfair

IN the three weeks since this page criticized Senate Bill 5297, to regulate signature gatherers, a substitute bill has surfaced in the Legislature. It is still unfairly and unnecessarily restrictive of the people's rights.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Sharon Nelson, D-Vashon, and nine other Democrats, looks very much like a measure simply to harass initiative sponsor Tim Eyman.

The bill says there is "a dramatic increase across the country in signature fraud." We have seen no such surge. This state had one case last year: an hourly employee of the Service Employees International Union who was circulating a petition for a state income tax.

Under Nelson's bill, paid signature gatherers would be required to sign a legal oath that all the signatures are valid to the best of their knowledge, and to give their home addresses. Volunteers would not have to do this. The bill defines "paid" as anyone working for a signature company and "volunteer" as anyone else, including paid workers of advocacy groups, corporations or unions.

And so the bill's disclosure provisions would not have applied to the one person in Washington who last year committed the very act the bill is supposed to prevent.

Case law on this is clear. Signature gathering is a constitutionally protected activity. Any restrictions have to be justified by the need for clean elections, and they have to apply to paid and unpaid gatherers alike.

We believe all signature gatherers, paid or unpaid, should have to sign each petition sheet. That is needed for accountability.

The earlier version of the bill would have raised the filing fee from $5 — a sum set a century ago — to $500. The new bill gives full discretion on setting fees to the secretary of state — a power that could be used to kill the process entirely. The fee should be set by the Legislature. A fee of $100 would more accurately reflect the inflation of the past century than $500.