Oregon votes 2002
A measure to stop the payment of petition circulators on a per-signature basis will be on the ballot this November.
Sponsors of Measure 26 believe that eliminating the practice will help reduce forgery, fraud, and misrepresentation. If passed, the measure will still allow signature gatherers to be paid on salary or by the hour.
“The process is dominated by special interests who throw money on the streets to buy signatures from persons whose only motivation is making a quick buck,” initiative sponsor Bob Davis said in a prepared statement.
According to the National Council of State Legislators, costs for qualifying ballot measures in Oregon in 2000 ranged from $65,000 to $400,000.
Oregon prohibited all paid signature gathering in 1935, but that changed when a 1988 Supreme Court decision invalidated a similar ban in Colorado.
It is illegal in Oregon to pay someone to sign or refrain from signing any petition, which means that petition circulators cannot offer money or anything of value to citizens to get them to sign their petitions. But there is currently no regulation barring initiative sponsors from paying “bounties” to petition circulators, which the NCSL says runs as high as $1 to $3 per signature.
Recently, petition circulators James Gurga and Paul Frankel pled guilty to fraud in a signature gathering scam in Portland. According to the union-sponsored Voter Education Project, which filed the complaint, Frankel and Gurga lured people with a fake petition that promised lower gas prices. Voters were then asked to sign several pages underneath to “validate” their signatures.
As voters signed the other pages, they were unknowingly putting their signatures on a wide range of other statewide ballot initiatives.
Oregonians for Initiative Integrity spokeswoman Patty Wentz said the majority of signatures are gathered by petitioners who get copies of initiatives, canvass independently, and then sell the signatures back to the campaign.
Wentz said the fact that Gurga and Frankel were paid on a per-signature basis encouraged them to mislead voters.
“The more they are paid, the more incentive they have to break election law,” she said.
But not everyone thinks Measure 26 is such a good idea.
Dane Waters, president of the Initiative and Referendum Institute in Washington, D.C., said laws like Measure 26 are not necessary, are not good public policy, and above all, are unconstitutional.
“There is no proof of rampant fraud,” he said. “We don’t believe there’s a necessity [for the measure].”
Waters said misrepresentation and forgery are just as likely to occur among people who are zealous advocates of a particular initiative, and banning payment per signature will not necessarily prevent the initiative process from being abused.
“We support anything to do away with fraud,” he said. “But we oppose any initiative that inhibits the use of the initiative process.”
The Institute does not engage in political campaigns against ballot measures, Waters said, but does take legal action against laws believed to be unconstitutional.
According to the NCSL, Maine, Mississippi, North Dakota, Washington, and Wyoming have passed similar legislation, but all except North Dakota’s and Wyoming’s laws have been struck down by the courts. A federal judge upheld North Dakota’s law on the basis that paying per signature does encourage fraud. In other states, however, the courts concluded that there was not enough evidence of widespread fraud to justify the restrictions.
Waters said that it is ultimately up to the voters to make sure they know what they’re signing.
“It’s not the government’s responsibility to protect the people from themselves,” he said. “It’s the responsibility of an individual to read the petition before they sign it.”
Ken Paulman is a freelance writer
for the Emerald.