Breaking News: Initiative Sponsors Violating Oregon Law
According to Our Oregon, a progressive organization fighting for stable funding for public services, the sponsors of several right-wing ballot measures are violating Oregon election law and wage-and-hour law.
From the press release:
Today Ellen Lowe, the chief petitioner of Measure 26, filed an election law violation complaint against the sponsors of four ballot measure petitions. Measure 26, which was passed by Oregon voters in 2002, made it illegal to pay circulators per signature. Lowe’s complaint says that based on statements gathered from circulators who worked for initiative petitions 14, 23, 24 and 57, circulators are being paid per signature. The circulators are acting as witnesses for the election law violation complaint. They have also filed wage and hour claims with the Bureau of Labor and Industries. ...Initiative petitions 14 and 24 are sponsored by the Washington, D.C. based FreedomWorks, with executive director Russ Walker as one of the chief petitioners. Initiative petition 23 is sponsored by Bill Sizemore. Initiative Petition
5157 is sponsored by Oregonians in Action, with chief petitioner Ross Day, who is OIA’s director of legal affairs.
This is a major story, and we'll be updating with more details as they become available.
Update: Lots more details in the comments.
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December 22, 2005 |
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Posted by: Patty Wentz | Dec 22, 2005 3:09:55 PM
Here is a link to photos from the news event. It was very lively! As some of you are aware, on Monday one of the signature gathering contractors moved into office space in our building. It was an amazing coincidence because at the same time the company was moving in, their former employees were reporting to us that they were illegally being paid per signature. Not only that, they were paid in cash - sometimes on street corners or out of the windows of a red car. They never received receipts for their payment nor were they allowed to report their actual hours worked.
Having the signature gathering company move into the basement was a great opportunity because the former circulators had told us that they were paid on Mondays and Thursdays around 10:00 a.m. So we invited the media to come about 9:40, finished our statements quickly, then seven reporters went to the back entrance to talk to signature gatherers who were coming to turn their signatures in. Apparently, after they turn their signatures in, the petition sheets are taken to Clackamas (according to what other circulators told us) and then one of the two managers for the company, Parker Bell or Brian Platt comes back with the cash.
Today, the circulators were told to return at 3:00 today to pick up their cash.
Several signature gatherers told reporters that they were paid per signature. Others said per hour. But as the reporters dug in and asked more questions, the facts became pretty clear - circulators said if they gathered six signatures they were paid for one hour, no matter how many hours it took them to gather those signatures. Others claimed that they were told they would be paid per hour, but it was their first payday, so it remained to be seen.
Also on the scene was Parker Bell. As you'll see in the photos, he wasn't all that interested in talking to the press, although he did promise to meet with some later if they called him.
Channels 2, 8 and 6 were here as well as the Oregonian, Willamette Week, Oregon Public Broadcasting and KEX. We've also checked in with Associated Press and BlueOregon.com
After the media left, more signature gatherers showed up to get paid and so far at least one sat down to file a wage and hour claim and election law violation claim after learning that he was not paid everything he was owed.
Again, here is a link to the photos: http://flickr.com/photos/ouroregon/sets/1636816/ Also, keep checking in here at www.blueoregon.com to get the latest updates on the story. Remember, pay time is 3:00 p.m. today. We’ll let you know what happens.
Posted by: Patty | Dec 22, 2005 3:12:41 PM
Time: 3:11
After a brief flare up, all is quiet. Several circulators showed up and Jon Becker from KGW also showed up, but no sign of Parker Bell or Brian Platt. People seemed pretty irritated that they weren't getting paid.
Posted by: Patty | Dec 22, 2005 3:44:20 PM
Time: 3:44
Still no Parker Bell or Brian Platt...and siganture gatherers are still waiting here to get paid. Question - shouldn't they be paid for this waiting time?
Posted by: Todd Brown | Dec 22, 2005 4:16:07 PM
You know what’s outrageous about this? These initiative sponsors hired Parker Bell after he’d been hit with a fine for running a fraudulent signature gathering operation last year! The Secretary of State should come down hard on all of them –- on Parker Bell AND the initiative sponsors.
It seems that the conservative war machine is engaging in unethical and illegal tactics at every level of government with little or no consequence. It looks like some of these crooks are finally getting what's been coming to them.
It’s fraud like this that makes voters lose faith in the system. The integrity of Oregon’s initiative process must be protected against these bounty-for-signature operations. And I hope to hear next week that the Bill Bradbury and the Dept. of Justice do the right thing -– fine these guys hard and put them out of business. For good this time.
Posted by: Josh | Dec 22, 2005 4:24:44 PM
Hey, if you want to catch a news story on this, I heard it's going to be on KGW tonight on their 10 pm and 11 pm broadcasts.
Posted by: Charles | Dec 22, 2005 4:35:48 PM
Amazing -- Freedomworks, Oregonians in Action and Sizemore all working together to break the law. That's like a bad guy tri-fecta. No surprise they would cut all the legal and ethical corners, I guess. I'm just impressed progresives busted their ass.
A christmas miracle.
Posted by: Patty | Dec 22, 2005 4:52:14 PM
It's nearly 5:00 here at the building where the signature gathering office is. It's nearly dark. Folks are still hanging out - some as long as two hours - waiting to get paid. Parker Bell and Brian Platt appear to have gone AWOL.
Posted by: MarkS | Dec 22, 2005 5:12:41 PM
These sleazeball signature-gathering companies have got to cease flaunting the law. I must add, where is the Oregon AG in all of this?
Must law-abiding citizens continue to do their work for them? You would think after the track record of previous signature-gathering schemes, the AG's office would be all over these kind of violations.
Posted by: Josh Berezin | Dec 22, 2005 5:14:15 PM
OPB just ran a long story on this, and it was great! Christella Lopez, Parker Bell's girlfriend, talked to reporters, and said some amazing stuff, just giving it all away, even as they tried to deny that they were paying per signature.
Christella Lopez: "They have to get six signatures on each initiative, for that hour, in order to get paid."
Reporter: "What if you work ten hours, only get six signatures, how much do you get paid?"
CL: "One hour. I mean, unless you were incompetent, you'd be able to talk to six people an hour. I mean, that's the minimum."
Yeah... Unless you were incompetent, you could follow basic election laws!
Posted by: dave brown | Dec 22, 2005 5:17:35 PM
Are these the same guys that Dan Meek hired to collect signatures for his campaign finance measure?
Posted by: Jessica | Dec 22, 2005 5:32:13 PM
I don't know if everyone saw this in the photos, but there's a suspicious character who seems to have shown up at the press conference, and Our Oregon needs help identifying him. Take a look here and here.
Posted by: JK | Dec 22, 2005 5:53:37 PM
"I don't know if everyone saw this in the photos, but there's a suspicious character who seems to have shown up at the press conference, and Our Oregon needs help identifying him. Take a look here and here."
Why do you need to identify him?
Does this mean the you keep a photo book of enemies?
Reminds me of NIXON's sleezy tricks.
Thanks
JK
Posted by: Josh Berezin | Dec 22, 2005 6:04:08 PM
I wouldn't say we NEED to identify him. He just behaved really strangely, and no one present really thought he was a signature gatherer, though he claimed to be. It seemed more likely that he was one of the ringleaders. He refused to give his name to the reporters, when asked.
Posted by: Patty | Dec 22, 2005 6:17:39 PM
Cristella is here now, maybe paying circulators. There has been some yelling.
The Associated Press has a story in which Dave Hunnicutt uses the same defense that other sponsors use when these charges arise: that signature gatherers are evaluated based on the number of signatures they gather.
That's not what is happening here.
Let's say Mr. Hunnicutt is paid a salary for working at Oregonians in Action. And let's assume his understanding is he will be paid per hour, but that in order to keep his job, he has to file a minimum of 6 property rights claims per month. And let's say that if he files only 3 claims, he could be fired because he didn't meet the expectations of the job. Fair enough. He failed to do the job.
But he would still have to be paid for the hours he worked. His salary could not be cut by 50% based on the number of claims he filed. Because he actually worked those hours.
So companies have the right to set expectations. They have the right to hire and fire. But they must pay for the hours worked.
What Bell and Platt are doing is telling the signature gatherers that the sheets they turn in don't qualify them to get paid the hourly rate so they are either underpaying them or not paying them at all. They count the signatures and calculate the rate.
It couldn't be more clear. That's not a quota - that's payment per signature. And it's illegal.
Posted by: Lisa Wolf | Dec 22, 2005 6:25:46 PM
So today the bottomfeeders were busted.
Let's follow this fraud all the way up the foodchain! Who's paying these creeps who pay the petitioners? And why didn't the folks in charge hire a reputable firm? Maybe that wasn't a mistake. Maybe they care more about getting their initiatives on the ballot than they care about the integrity of system.
Shame on these petition sponsors twice:
Shame on them for treating their vulnerable employees so badly,
and
shame on them for treating Oregon voters so badly.
Posted by: Robin | Dec 22, 2005 6:28:32 PM
The important thing is to avoid, prevent and obstruct the public from voting on as many issues as possible.
They have shown too many times they vote the wrong way.
Posted by: Wes Wagner | Dec 22, 2005 6:47:16 PM
Robin,
Excellent sarcasm - I love it - do you want me to mail you a free paper? publisher@nwmeridian.com
-Wes Wagner
NW Meridian
PS: It's funny how the people who created the initiative petition now hate things going to a public vote because the public always votes against their ideas.
Posted by: CLP | Dec 22, 2005 7:20:05 PM
Robin: No, the important thing is that signatures are collected properly, reguardless of merit of the initiatves. Paying people on a per-signature basis creates an incentive to forge signatures. After such forgery was documented, Oregonians decided, by the initiative process, to disallow this practice. Sure, we have no evidence that the people in this particular incident were forging signatures, but if the payment-per-signature allegations are true, then this incident is deeply troubling.
It has nothing to do with the proposed measure involved. I would be just as troubled if signature gathers for a left-leaning measure were being paid per signature. I hope everyone else here would be as well.
Wes: That's not always true. The law that prohibits paying signature gatherers on a per-signature basis was passed via initiative.
There has to be some standard to limit the number of measures. If everyone's favorite idea for a ballot measure got on the ballot, our ballots would be 300 pages long. When you have too many measures, most people haven't the time or energy to carefully scrutinize each one, and as a result, poor decisions are made. Thus, I think it is a good idea that people be careful about the petitions they sign (people should insist on reading the entire text of the measure before signing), and that safeguards against fraud are meticulously applied.
Posted by: Jenni Simonis | Dec 22, 2005 7:48:09 PM
I'll be glad when the "per signature" rule is extended to include voter registrations.
I can't tell you how many fake voter registrations were submitted to the elections offices last year. However, the vast majority did not have real addresses on them, or were for business addresses as opposed to residential, and did not go through.
We also got a lot of calls from people who received ballots at their home for people who didn't exist, for their dog, etc.
Posted by: Robin | Dec 22, 2005 7:54:59 PM
CLP,
Your lecture really wasn't needed.
Besides you made my point any way.
First you say the point is to make sure "signatures are collected properly" and to avoid the "incentive to forge signatures".
Then you say "There has to be some standard to limit the number of measures."
Translation: Avoid, prevent and obstruct the public from voting.
"poor decisions are made" according to you and your bullshit.
The ban on pay per signature was all about stopping public votes period.
Although there may have been some isolated cases of some forgeries, you can't point to a single ballot initiative that was placed on the ballot because of forged signatures.
Even before the ban it was extremely difficult and costly to get an initiative on the ballot.
Your conniving chaps want it nearly impossible because the voters
are too friggin stupid, Right?
Posted by: Kari Chisholm | Dec 22, 2005 8:20:21 PM
Robin, you ask, "Your conniving chaps want it nearly impossible because the voters are too friggin stupid, Right?"
No. Because some (but not all) initiative sponsors are too stupid.
For the love of god, Measure 37 had typos in it. They couldn't even be bothered to hire a proofreader - nevermind a decent attorney.
Posted by: David Delk | Dec 22, 2005 8:37:42 PM
To answer the question regarding Dan Meek and the Campaign Finance Reform initiative using the Parker Bell gang, we are not using them.
Posted by: Marcello | Dec 22, 2005 8:42:11 PM
I'll be glad when the "per signature" rule is extended to include voter registrations.
HB 2583-A failed in the house last session, on a party line vote. Would have prohibited individuals from receiving payments based on the number of signed voter registration cards they collect. Once we take the house next year, it should pass.
There are many things that can be done to prevent fraud in the electoral procedures here in Oregon. But until republicans like Derrik Kitts are chairing the committees on it, there is no chance of those proposals passing.
Posted by: Jenni Simonis | Dec 22, 2005 9:33:48 PM
Marcello--
Yea, I was pretty disappointed it failed. I think probably every single person who spent any time working in a county elections office last year probably felt the same way.
Some groups were bringing in box after box of voter reg cards-- and many they had to have known were fake (such as one for Satan that I came across and one for Santa that someone else came across).
I can't wait until we take the House-- I'm doing my part by helping us to win H.D. 49 and 50 out here in Gresham.
Posted by: askquestions1st | Dec 22, 2005 9:48:30 PM
Odd thing about populists: They all believe "My populism good, your populism bad".
Whether or not one agrees with the substance of these petitions (and I don't), why exactly is paying people by the hour "good", but paying people by the signature "bad" --- particularly since apparently the impetus for this change was that fraudulent signatures were caught before, meaning the verification system worked?
(Of course, this is not a defense of what is happening in this case, the state should throw the book at the sponsors of these petitions for violating labor laws by not paying these people according to the terms of the agreement they made to pay them by the hour, since failing to meet a production quota might legally be grounds for termination, but not for withholding pay.)
And if there is a danger bad signatures won't be caught, doesn't that obviously mean that it would be possible for vote-by-mail votes with bad signatures would get through (same voters, same verification, right?)
Like I said, sounds more like a case of "my populism good, your populism bad", than any rational defense of representative democracy.
By the way Kari --- literacy and intelligence tests for participating in the electoral process went out with the 14th Amendment. Whether one believes that is a good thing or not (and I happen to believe it was), based on the posts by some of the progressives on Blue Oregon, we probably shouldn't be throwing stones about political or print literacy. Rather we should be educating folks about the importance of representative democracy in a pluralistic society as a necessary check sometimes on populism.
Posted by: CLP | Dec 22, 2005 9:49:26 PM
Then you say "There has to be some standard to limit the number of measures."Translation: Avoid, prevent and obstruct the public from voting.
Robin, are you saying there should be no bar to putting measures on the ballot? If that were the case, the ballot would be 500 pages long? (I'm not using hyperbole here, either. How many bills are proposed in the Legislature each session?) There's no way that most voters would be able to wade through that.
There has to be some standard to limit the number of measures on the ballot.
The ban on pay per signature was all about stopping public votes period.
I doubt that's what Oregonians had in mind when they passed Measure 26. And if Measure 26 was about destroying the initiative process, it has done a lousy job, considering that initiatives continue to be passed despite it.
(Even if the backers of Measure 26 hated the initiative system and wanted it to go away, I don't think that was the motives of the Oregonians who passed it.)
Although there may have been some isolated cases of some forgeries, you can't point to a single ballot initiative that was placed on the ballot because of forged signatures.
I don't know if a measure was ever placed on the ballot solely due to fraud, and frankly, there's no way for me to know. I don't think we could ever detect more than a small portion of the fraud on initiative sheets. But there were several documented cases of fraud, and it doesn't take a psychologist to understand how paying people per signature would lead to more fake signatures. Nor do the companies who collect signatures have much of a motivation to eliminate such fraud. I think Oregonians were very reasonable in saying that the integrity of our process depends on eliminating such a clear motivation to cheat.
Your conniving chaps want it nearly impossible because the voters are too friggin stupid, Right?
No. I don't think it's voter stupidity that makes it difficult for voters to wade through ballots chalk-full of measures. I think it's time limitations: voters don't have time to seriously research and discuss more than a handful of measures per election. Legislators, lobbyists, and members of the media can, because it's their job. But for the average working person, wading a ballot full of mostly crap (and I think left-leaning measures are just a capable of being crap as right-leaning measures) is a headache, and invites a voter to overlook some crucial but steathily-placed detail in a measure.
But here's a question for you, Robin: suppose you disagree with me, and think this law is "bullshit". Does that mean these people should be allowed to just disreguard it?
Posted by: Kari Chisholm | Dec 22, 2005 10:42:01 PM
AQ1-- Come on, let's not go setting up straw-man arguments here. I certainly didn't argue for any "literacy and intelligence tests" for voters. I didn't even argue for any tests of that sort for initiative sponsors.
As for your other question - why do we need this if the fraudulent signatures are caught anyway? Because they were NOT caught anyway. In 2002, the only way that a bunch of fraudulent signatures were discovered was because a private organization - the Voter Education Project - paid for the research themselves.
The government auditing processes were failing. Or, more to the point, the systems aren't in place (by law, not by incompetence) to catch these fraudsters. You see, the whole system - like much in politics - relies on self-enforcement by political opposition.
But the problem there is that if one side is overwhelmingly defrauding the system (as Bill Sizemore did - note: conviction for racketeering) then that simply creates costs for their political opponents. And that doesn't make sense.
It makes more sense to have tougher rules that have brighter-line enforcement, and eliminate some of the incentives for bad behavior.
When Oregon voters got rid of pay-per-signature, they chose to reduce the incentive for fraud. That's a good thing. Now, there's a group that appears to be circumventing that law -- why?
Hard to know - incompetent? or deliberate fraud? We can't know. But we do know that they appear to be violating the wage-and-hour law and the election law.
Posted by: Kari Chisholm | Dec 22, 2005 11:03:50 PM
CLP wrote: But here's a question for you, Robin: suppose you disagree with me, and think this law is "bullshit". Does that mean these people should be allowed to just disregard it?
I remember fondly the late 1990s, when every Republican was going on and on and on about "the rule of law". Now, George Bush doesn't care about it - and Robin (among others) thinks our election law is "bullshit". Oh, it's good to be a Republican.
Election law and intelligence oversight law doesn't matter, but lying about blowjobs, well that's REALLY IMPORTANT.
Posted by: Jenni Simonis | Dec 22, 2005 11:18:51 PM
Here's the difference in paying per hour as opposed to per signature:
PER SIGNATURE: You work 6 hours and get 10 signatures. You're paid $2 per signature. You end up with $12 for 6 hours worth of work-- or $2/hour.
PER HOUR: You work 6 hours and get 10 signatures. You're paid minimum wage. You get paid $72.50 for that work-- or $7.25/hour. If 10 signatures was below what they'd like you to get, you can be reprimanded, fired, or if you were making more than minimum wage your hourly wage could be lowered.
Yes, some people may be tempted to forge signature to keep their job or keep their wage from being lowered. However, it's not going to be nearly the temptation as it is when you're worried you may only make a few bucks for an entire day's worth of work.
Posted by: Jenni Simonis | Dec 22, 2005 11:22:19 PM
And if there is a danger bad signatures won't be caught, doesn't that obviously mean that it would be possible for vote-by-mail votes with bad signatures would get through (same voters, same verification, right?)
I could be wrong, but aren't signatures on petitions randomly checked? I thought I had heard that they only randomly check signatures/info on the petitions.
I know for a fact that every signature on every ballot is checked (I did it myself last year).
Posted by: Kari Chisholm | Dec 23, 2005 1:09:53 AM
Jenni - you are correct on both counts.
Posted by: t.a. barnhart | Dec 23, 2005 1:23:24 AM
once upon a time i was proud of Oregon's ballot measure system. what a great idea, thinks i, having grown up in the wilderness of Billings, Montana (although native Oregon born). i was so happy to sign petitions to get good laws before the voters, to make sure justice was done by real democracy.
i almost never sign petitions anymore. we have better and more effective means of democratizing our politics these days. even the best written initiative is going to have hidden traps and loopholes. it's inevitable with how complex our laws are. few of these are written with any kind of care. most try to cover too much, or be too specific, or to cover too many possibilities. all hopeless causes.
the Constitution of the United States works so well because it is brief and contingent. the Founders did not try to fix the world with that document; they just set the groundrules. they expected those who followed them to act through the legislatures , executives and courts to deal with problems as they arose. the simplicity, with all its ambiguity and room for improvement, has worked wondrously well.
most ballot measures fail the simplest tests of good law. we don't need more ballot measures; we need more citizen interaction with the legislature. we need an annual session, for that matter, a chance for people to work with their elected officials on an on-going basis to amend laws in smaller steps. no one gets ahead of me in line in terms of being a democrat, but i think the day of the ballot measure has passed. we need to find better ways to bring citizens into the process -- not special interest groups with the money to pay for signatures and advertising.
Posted by: PanchoPdx | Dec 23, 2005 1:26:17 AM
Jenni,
What was the average amount of time you (or anyone else you know) spent checking validity on each vote-by-mail signature?
I bet it was less than five seconds per signature. Probably around two or three seconds.
Compare to the average time used to verify petition signatures. More like a minute per signature. I know, I've watched the process. The election officials study the way someone makes their t's or L's as if they are trying to solve a crime. They ignore the fact that most petition signers sign petitions on the street on a clipboard held by someone else (rather than sitting down to sign a vote-by-mail ballot at the comfort of their dinner table), they've heard that there is fraud in the petitions and they are happy to play Dick Tracy.
Consider that in the average signature verification process, a county election office has about two weeks to verify 5% of the signatures gathered in the county per petition, but in a vote by mail election the county verifies every signature on every vote cast (and there are many more of these than petition signatures) in a shorter period.
Vastly different levels of scrutiny, don't kid yourself.
Posted by: Jenni Simonis | Dec 23, 2005 1:53:21 AM
Actuakky Poncho, you're wrong. The procedure for comparing signatures is the same for petitions and ballots.
During last year's election, we had every computer in the building working to check signatures on ballots. We probably had something like 30 people verifying signatures. We started doing that days before election day-- shortly after ballots started coming back. The ballots weren't opened, the signatures were just checked and then the boxes were locked up.
When checking initiative petitions, it's usually only the people in the one small room that are checking signatures.
We were all trained in watching to check for how letters like t, i, p, h, etc. were done. We were also to look at the slant of signatures.
We had an expert in signatures and hand writing comparison come in and do training on this.
We also were shown how a signature could differ if written while you were sitting down as opposed to on a clipboard-- the way many signatures on voter regs were done.
Most signatures can be checked in about 4-5 seconds. However, on numerous occasions we had signatures that took longer.
We also didn't have to verify anything but the signature matched the name on the envelope and that it matched the signature on file (sometimes people in the same household accidentally signed each other's envelopes). With petitions they're also verifying the information with the signature is correct.
Posted by: Becky | Dec 23, 2005 9:05:33 AM
I've watched elections officials validate entire pages of forged signatures. I've also seen them invalidate absolutely valid signatures. I don't have a lot of faith in their ability to judge correctly.
Regarding the pay-per-signature versus per-hour debate, I tend to disagree that it's a good idea. The reason is there are some people who are just plain incredibly good at engaging people and collecting signatures. These professional signature gatherers are motivated by per-signature pay. They are very efficient and because they view petitioning as their career they rarely, if ever, cheat or forge signatures because they don't want to be blacklisted. There are others who are lazy and crooked, who will do the minimum necessary to get by and don't respect the process. These are the ones most likely to forge signatures, no matter how they are paid. What's going to stop them from forging pages and pages of signatures and claiming they collected 6 an hour when they've already show themselves to be willing to forge pages and pages of signatures in order to avoid getting off their butts and collecting them for real? Absolutely nothing. I'm no Sizemore apologist, but I will say that I believe wholeheartedly that he was far better at spotting forgeries than any of the elections officials I have observed, and he truly worked hard to weed forgeries out. Sometimes they slipped through - it happens. But despite all the other bad behavior he engaged in, I do not believe Sizemore ever tolerated or encouraged submission of forged signatures.
I will bet that in this case, Sizemore and the others working on this campaign believe the per-signature law is unconstitutional, don't respect it, and feel they are acting within their rights to pay on a per-signature basis so long as they don't get caught or so long as they can make a case that they were following the law. They appear to have overlooked the lack of political savvy and ability to keep the flapper shut of some of their employees (and I would also bet the employees who are cooperating were plants in the first place - part of a sting operation - not that I have a problem with that). In my opinion, the law is what it is, whether right or wrong, and should be followed until changed or successfully challenged in court, but my assessment of the groups involved here is that they respect what they feel is right more than they respect the law, which is why they are apparently getting into trouble here.
Posted by: john calhoun | Dec 23, 2005 9:16:51 AM
Jenni,
Thank you so much for describing the signature verification process on ballots. You did us all a service. So many times people across the country criticize vote by mail and insist that there is a lot of fraud. It helps to have the facts and really understand the safeguards built in. It is too bad this isn't published in the Oregonian in at least the same detail you described, but then this is why I love to read BlueOregon.
Posted by: PanchoPdx | Dec 23, 2005 9:56:17 AM
So I'm "wrong" Jenni?
I said that vote-by-mail signatures get on average less than 5 seconds of scrutiny apiece. You said that it was 4-5 seconds for most of them.
Sounds like I pegged it.
I can tell you for a fact that most initiative petition signatures average close to a minute of scrutiny. I've been there.
There are no objective standards for disqualification, the folks doing it admit it is more of an "art" than a science. Sometimes that art is used to search for inclusiveness (i.e., look for consistencies between signatures) and sometimes it presents itself as an opportunity to throw out a "Robert N. Pescatelli" because he just signed "R. N. Pescatelli" but hadn't updated his signature card to reflect his new signature.
What's more, Jenni, is that there is a disincentive to hold vote-by-mail signatures to the same standard as initiative petitions because of the reporting requirements for each. If a vote-by-mail signature is discarded, it requires paperwork. The voter has to be informed, and often they are not too happy about having their vote disqualified.
When a petition signature is thrown out, not only does the signer never find out about it, that signature takes 19 others with it (because of the random sampling formula). No paperwork is filled out, no notice to anyone. A checker just puts an "x" by the signature and marks a number in a column.
The truth is that if half as many people had their signatures discarded under vote-by-mail as for petitions, the outcry would be enormous. We would have gone back to regular polling methods years ago.
Posted by: sasha | Dec 23, 2005 10:10:34 AM
Personally, I love vote by male. This nation has gone steadily downhill since we gave women the vote.
Posted by: Marcello | Dec 23, 2005 10:50:13 AM
I said that vote-by-mail signatures get on average less than 5 seconds of scrutiny apiece. You said that it was 4-5 seconds for most of them.
Sounds like I pegged it.
I can tell you for a fact that most initiative petition signatures average close to a minute of scrutiny. I've been there.
Is too much to ask for you to actually READ Jenni's message before replying?
1) Ballot envelopes have a barcode. You scan the barcode and all the signatures on file for that voter appear on the screen. You compare them with the one on the envelope, and in 5 seconds you go to the next one. If there are any doubts, the envelope gets put aside for a later, longer review.
2) Signatures on an initiative sheet have no barcode or anything that will have a computer pop up the voter signature on the screen. You try to decypher the name and address on the form next to the signature, and use that to search in the computer signature database. A minute per signature sounds about right.
Posted by: Ross Williams | Dec 23, 2005 11:28:13 AM
It simply isn't true that banning pay per signature prevents companies from collecting signatures. There is at least one company, here that pays by the hour and has been very successful.
The claim that there has been some massive fraud with voter registration has never been documented. Which I think is the reason legislation has never passed. People who fill out voter registration cards for Santa are not trying to commit fraud. Moreover, there are any number barriers already in place to prevent fraudulent voting that are more effective than restricting voter registration procedures. This is a solution looking for a problem.
Posted by: Marcello | Dec 23, 2005 11:58:58 AM
The claim that there has been some massive fraud with voter registration has never been documented. Which I think is the reason legislation has never passed.
Do we find MASSIVE voter registration fraud for people to pay attention? What's wrong with prevention, anyway?
As far as I am concerned, if one voter find herself registered to the wrong party because the registration card was altered before delivery to the election office, or if a voter is unable to vote because his registration card is tossed in the trash, we have a problem. Didn't we have something like that happen in the last election?
It is just amazing that preventing elections fraud is a partisan issue.
Posted by: Wes Wagner | Dec 23, 2005 12:10:11 PM
It may be that vote fraud is a partisan issue becuase both sides want to be sure that whatever happens, they are able to cheat the system better than their opponents.
Democrats hand out free cartons of cigs in Wisconsin and get caught red handed and aren't prosecuted... why? because nobody would want to start a habit of prosecuting election fraud.
After all - republicans might wind up in jail for voting machine malfeasance if they started that tradition.
Just because we have a democracy does not mean we are free.
-Wes Wagner
Posted by: charles | Dec 23, 2005 12:27:32 PM
Couldn't help noticing that David Delk didn't actually answer the previous question about whether this was the same Parker Bell that they were using on the CFR campaign.
David's response seemed very spare and well parsed: "we are not using him" is not the same as "we haven't used him," i.e. before he went on to Freedomworks.
Posted by: Jenni Simonis | Dec 23, 2005 12:29:05 PM
Marcello had it right. Guess I should have went into more detail.
Ballots are grouped together by precinct when they come in. Someone then scans each envelope's barcode into the computer, creating a batch. That batch is a box of envelopes.
When you go to work a box, it has a code on it. You put the code into the computer, which tells the computer which batch you're working on. It pops up the first envelope in the box. You select whether or not it matches, and then it pops up the next envelope.
We didn't have to go hunting for the person's registration-- they were already bundled together on the computer so we could quickly run through a box.
Most signatures only take 4-5 seconds because they are almost exactly the same as the signature on file. It's the ones that are different (J. Simonis as opposed to Jennifer Simonis, or they use a nickname instead of their first name) that take a bit longer. But you look at how they wrote their last name, how they write out certain letters to see if the signature is from the same person. It doesn't have to match the signature exactly (Will instead of William, J. instead of Jennifer, etc.) to be approved.
If a signature doesn't match, it isn't thrown out right away-- other people check those signatures.
When they do petitions, they have to try to figure out the person's handwriting so that they can locate the person in the voter database. Sometimes it can take a good 20-40 seconds just to pull up the person's record. Once they locate the person, they have to verify the person's signature as well as the other information that is listed (address).
Of course it's going to take longer-- they have to decipher the handwriting, find the person in the computer, verify information, and verify signature. That's always going to take longer than having the signature pop up right in front of you automatically and comparing only a signature to the screen.
Posted by: Jeff Alworth | Dec 23, 2005 1:19:58 PM
Wow, cool thread. This may mark the first time we've essentially had liveblogging in a comments thread--from the subject of the post, no less. Thanks, Patty, for participating--this is really what distinguishes blogs as "collaborative" media.
As to the populism argument, it DOES need nuance. When progressives first established the initiative system, it was to fight entrenched power. We've seen many wonderful results from this--from the Bottle Bill to Death with Dignity. But it has lately been hijacked by the very entrenched power it was meant to combat--and often in the form of out-of-state (big money) interests. To call that "populism" is at best ignornance.
Another wrinkle is that populism can lead to dangerous or stupid laws. We would not live in a free society if the majority always ruled--the heart of democracy lies in protecting minority rights. Just because a lot of people believe something doesn't necessarily make it true.
At the end of the day, the initiative system seems to have two identities--a system where citizens can become lawmakers to right the wrongs of entrenched power, but also a seedy, carny identity where professional cranks and dubious signature-gathering factories trawl the streets to see if they can get lucky. If we didn't have folks watching the latter, we'd jeopardize the former.
Posted by: Pat Ryan | Dec 23, 2005 1:32:24 PM
I agree with you on most of your points Jeff, and you're correct that this real time info was very cool indeed.
I do want to post a minor quibble. Your statement:
the heart of democracy lies in protecting minority rights.
Should read: The heart of a republic lies in protecting minority rights. Democracies like that of Athens can all legitimately get together and order dissenters to drink the Hemlock.....
Posted by: Jeff Alworth | Dec 23, 2005 3:12:31 PM
Point taken, Professor Ryan...
Posted by: Lisa Wolf | Dec 23, 2005 3:22:09 PM
But don’t forget -- the buck doesn’t stop with Parker Bell. Sure, he’s the guy handing out the undocumented cash for signatures, but someone’s writing him a big check at the end of the day, right?
Aren’t the chief petitioners legally responsible for the practice of signature gathering that go on in support of their initiative? I believe that’s technically correct, and frankly that sounds fair to me. In this situation, Bill Sizemore, Ross Day and Russ Walker hired Parker Bell who’d already been caught red-handed for these kinds of violations.
Just a thought -- If Parker Bell is a repeat offender in violating election and labor laws, shouldn’t he be put out of business for good?
Posted by: CLP | Dec 23, 2005 4:32:57 PM
Wes is, to some degree, right. Human nature is to ignore the shortcomings of those we agree with. We ought to be careful to apply the same high standards to operations which collect signatures for ballot measures we agree with, as well as those we disagree with.
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Posted by: Steve Talley | Dec 22, 2005 2:13:28 PM
Congratulations to Our Oregon for keeping conservatives honest. It always amazes me what lengths those who think they are chosen by god to right the wrongs of the world will go to. "Illegal? Sure, but it's for a good cause and we're on the RIGHT side, god's side."