Signature-gatherers busy filling petitions

By Beth Kaiman
Seattle Times staff reporter

BRIAN CASSELLA / THE SEATTLE TIMES Debra Macisco, left, coaxes signatures for two petitions from Jeanette Harris outside a supermarket earlier this month. Macisco also registers voters.

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And yet ... .

Debra Macisco nabs another one.

"Hi, love. Are you a registered voter?" she asks, smiling, always smiling. "No? Well, then let me give you this. Oh, you are? Well, the bars and taverns and bowling alleys are trying to have designated smoking areas and not just a ban, because a ban would just hurt those small businesses and they think people should just have a choice, right? For people who want to smoke and people who don't ... ."

Sold. The pen comes out and Bob Freimark, retired Army and frequently annoyed taxpayer, signs. He's about the 50th shopper in four hours at this Tacoma Safeway to succumb, edging sponsors of Initiative 891, the proposal for smoking areas, and Initiative 892, a gambling/property tax proposal, closer to the 197,734 valid signatures needed by Friday to get on the Nov. 2 ballot.

For Macisco, one of the scores of paid signature gatherers across the state making the final push, the two minutes it took at this Tacoma supermarket to get Freimark to stop wheeling his cart and digging for his keys was worth $2.25 — 75 cents for I-891 and $1.50 for I-892.

This year, paid workers such as Macisco have been doing their election-season cajoling in the face of unprecedented, financed opposition that questions their ethics and laments the passing of all-volunteer citizen initiatives.

The strategy, say political consultants, isn't likely to keep big initiatives off the ballot. But the mission will be accomplished, they say, if the phone calls, radio spots and newspaper ads generate earlier-than-ever voter skepticism of some ballot proposals.

"This is the first time there's been a concerted effort at ... signature suppression," said Rollin Fatland, a spokesman for No On I-892, a political-action committee funded mainly by the Muckleshoot tribe. "In the past it's been, 'Oh my God, what do we do? It's on the ballot." The Muckleshoots and other tribes want to start the opposition early, fearing a loss of revenue from the initiative's call to end the tribal casinos' monopoly on electronic slot machines.

The campaign has included separate and unified efforts by the tribes and a public employees union opposed to Eyman's I-864, a property-tax lowering initiative. Weeks of radio spots featured the stern, law-and-order voice of King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng urging voters to "read the fine print" and "make sure you know what you are signing and who is asking you to sign it."

That ad was meant to build on suspicions raised by phone calls made to hundreds of thousands of homes across the state, telling voters that paid signature gatherers had been convicted of forgery and signature fraud (none have in Washington state) and warning to "protect yourself and beware."
 
As to the effectiveness of the radio ads, phone calls and an anti-gambling initiative ad that ran this month in six newspapers around the state, "no one's got a clue," Fatland said.

The intent, said Christian Sinderman, a frequent Eyman critic who wrote the radio ad script, was to raise awareness and suggest that the buying and selling of signatures is eroding a proud state tradition of direct citizen involvement in lawmaking.

"To that extent, we also get to question the merits of the campaign itself — show what they are willing to do to get their initiative through, that it's often purely business and not an idea about how to improve the state or people's lives," Sinderman said.

Tracy Oetting of Skykomish, is running the low-budget campaign for I-861, which calls for putting some sex offenders in prison for life after one conviction. This will be the second time she has failed to get enough signatures to make the ballot.

She said paid gatherers offered to carry her petition for free. She said she made sure they understood she had no money to give them (she estimates her campaign budget at about $7,000) but says they told her they could use her petition for a one-strike law for sex offenders as a lure to get people to also sign other petitions for initiatives that were paying money. What followed, she said, were calls to her and others in the campaign asking for money for lodging and more and more printed petitions. Oetting said she gave out hundreds of petitions to the paid gatherers — at no small cost — but didn't get many back. She said she would have gotten more volunteers had she known the paid gatherers wouldn't be returning the sheets.

Blair Butterworth, a political consultant who this year is part of an initiative campaign using paid signature gatherers, said he sees pitfalls in using paid workers, but societal changes have made it nearly impossible to conduct all-volunteer signature-gathering drives. Most families have two adults working, he noted, and, with other responsibilities, there isn't much time to "stand on a street corner for hours and get signatures — unless you are very personally affected by the issue."

Butterworth is a board member of the League of Education Voters, which is backing I-884 to add a penny to the sales tax for education spending.

He compared the signature-gathering business to a Middle Eastern bazaar. Different campaigns pay different amounts per signature, he said. The price often increases in the weeks before the signatures are due or if getting signatures is proving especially hard. Also, he said, signature-gathering firms and campaigns are sometimes approached late in a campaign by people who "just show up. They printed up petitions on their own, show up with 1,000 signatures and want to be paid. And they want to name the price."

And, he said, some signature gatherers hoard signatures until the price goes up.

Sherry Bockwinkel, who heads the Tacoma signature-gathering firm Washington Initiatives Now, said she kicks hoarders out of her office.

"If they come in each week with 500 signatures and then, suddenly, come in with 2,000 one week, I know they've been holding back," she said.

Bockwinkel resents the signature-suppression campaign, but says "to an extent, I know where they're coming from. Some of us have helped bring this on."

She said she does not contract with campaigns at cross-purposes, for instance an initiative drive to raise taxes and another one to lower taxes. "It gives signature gatherers a bad name to have one clipboard for one thing and another that it is directly opposed. It looks like you don't believe in anything."

Beth Kaiman: 206-464-2441 or bkaiman@seattletimes.com