Revealing referendum signatures will chill First Amendment speech

IT surprises me that freedom lovers would come to claim that the rights of individuals to engage in protected political speech (signing a petition) are less important than the rights of those individuals who are just curious as to who signed the petitions.

It boggles the mind that freedom lovers would take the side of those who desire to publish the names of the signers on the Internet in order to harass, intimidate and chill First Amendment speech, over the rights of signers to speak freely.

Yet The Seattle Times and other newspapers argue that the signatures of those citizens who succeeded in placing Referendum 71 on the ballot should be made public ["The good fight," editorial, Opinion, Sept. 12]. The referendum asks voters whether to approve or reject a recently passed state law that grants marriage-like benefits to unmarried people who are registered as domestic partners.

Contrary to the convictions of most of Washington's newspapers, this has not been the consistent policy of the state. In fact, back in 1938, Washington's attorney general issued the following opinion:

"It is the public policy of this state that we uphold the secret ballot in every particular, and these petitions are, more or less, in effect a vote of those who sign the petitions requesting that certain statutes be passed and made the law of the state. This being a fact, we are of the opinion that these petitions are not public records and your office should refuse to permit them to be inspected and copied."

Every secretary of state in Washington has agreed with this position except the current one, and even he agreed until 2006. A Washington law governing referendums declares that the advocates or opponents of a proposed measure may "make no record of the names, addresses, or other information on the petitions or related records during the verification process except upon the order of the Superior Court of Thurston County." That's pretty clear.

Secretary of State Sam Reed thinks that the 1972 Public Records Act — an act to provide transparency of government actions, not to provide information on the actions of private citizens engaged in protected political speech — supersedes this provision. He also thinks the act supersedes the Washington constitution, which requires him to facilitate the referendum process, not frustrate it.

The First Amendment protects the right to speak freely. Political speech is the most important speech protected by this amendment. Free speech is the very core of a free society. Conversely, there is no newspaper in this state that can point to a constitutional right to "know thy neighbor." This is why I find it unreasonable that the press would side with a nonexistent "right to know" over a First Amendment right to freedom of speech, particularly when it is the central freedom for your own enterprise.

This is an embarrassing, ugly little episode in the state's history, where the state is simply on the wrong side of essential freedoms, as the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will soon find. The state has no compelling interest in providing a database of names and address of petition signers to a requester. However, for the sake of transparency, let's disclose the names and addresses of all of those who worked at the secretary of state's office during this signature-verification process.

Maybe whosigned.org can visit with them and have an "uncomfortable conversation" concerning the way they verified signatures.