BISC’s Signature Reform Guidelines
The guiding principles in any efforts for reform should be centered on protecting the integrity of the initiative process and signature gathering and enacting reforms that will protect voters against fraud and help us bring effective challenges in future cycles. Our purpose is not to make it harder to qualify or recommend radical changes.
We recognize that each initiative state is different, and that each has existing constitutional and statutory regulations which must be considered. The ideas which follow are meant to be a menu of suggestions for signature gathering reform; some items might not be a good fit with your state. Many of the reforms we are recommending are related to one another and should be tied together for the greatest impact, but we understand this is not a one size fits all strategy.
Ideas for Signature Reform
Following are some ideas for reforms that would help put teeth in initiative laws and help us to pursue and prosecute fraud in future cycles.
The most important items on this list are as follows:
- Petitioners must sign an affidavit swearing lawful gathering of signatures
- Circulators should be required to register with the Secretary of State
- Voters should be required to fill in all fields on the petition-the circulator should have no reason or legal latitude to write on that particular section of the petition
- Specificity around what constitutes fraud or forgery
- Specificity around what elections officials can do once fraud or forgery is discovered
- Notary requirements
- Allowing signature withdrawal
- Guidelines around what the sample/ formula should look like
- The public should have reasonable access to the petitions
- Petitioners must report income or pay Business & Occupation taxes if they remain independent
- Penalties for fraud and forgery both at the circulator level as well as for the owners of signature firms and funders of the campaigns
- Create more clear liability for the people at the top (fraud, racketeering, etc)
- People convicted of certain crimes (ID theft, sex offenses, other fraud) can’t circulate
- Pay by the hour
Click here for other possible reform ideas.
