Since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger owes his job to paid signature gatherers, it’s no surprise that he vetoed a bill that would have made their lives a lot tougher – or at least more expensive.
That’s not the reason he gave, of course. A bill that would have banned the current pay-per-signature system was rejected because, according to the governor’s veto message, “prohibitions on per signature payments would make it more difficult for grassroots organizations to secure the necessary signatures and qualify measures for the ballot.”
Cue stirring music and video of California flag rippling over the Capitol.
Schwarzenegger’s veto of SB 34 by Democratic Sen. Ellen Corbett of San Leandro was serious stuff, however, since it blocked an attempt to make a major change in the way California deals with its ballot measures.
Currently, groups looking to get a measure on the ballot hire petition management companies. These companies sign up signature gatherers, the guys who set up in front of supermarkets and on busy sidewalks, and agree to pay them so much for every signature they turn in.
Corbett and other opponents argue that it’s a system ripe for fraud. If you get paid $1 for every signature, why not add a bunch of fake ones to boost your paycheck?
But if the companies were forced to pay the signature crews a flat fee or an hourly wage, the cost of those petition drives would rise, opponents complained, making it impossible for some groups to get a measure on the ballot.
Some of SB 34’s backers also may be less interested in a high-minded battle against fraud than in keeping their opponents off the ballot.
Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, for example, testified in favor of the bill during legislative hearings, arguing it’s needed because “there are increasing reports of ballot initiative fraud in the signature gathering process.”
A cynic, however, may note that since 2005 Planned Parenthood chapters across the state have had to raise more than $14 million to fight a trio of ballot initiatives by an anti-abortion group looking to require minors to have the consent of a parent, guardian or a judge before receiving an abortion.
They’ve won all three, but would be happy never to see that consent law on the ballot again.
If a bill could take paid signature gatherers out of the picture, that could happen. According to a May report by Center for Governmental Studies, it’s been 27 years since a California initiative campaign relied exclusively on volunteers to collect signatures. Even campaigns that have plenty of volunteers hitting the streets with clipboards spend the money for paid circulators to manage their efforts and make sure their ballot measure qualifies.
It’s a matter of big numbers in a big state. In California this year, it will take 433,971 valid signatures to qualify a statute for the ballot and 694,354 for a constitutional amendment. Add 40 percent to those numbers to cover any invalid signatures and it becomes a boggling job for an all-volunteer effort.
Since it generally takes $2 million or more to qualify a measure for the ballot, many grassroots groups already are being priced out of the initiative market, leaving the field to corporate groups and nationally funded efforts.
PG&E, for example, already has given $3 million to help qualify an initiative that would require a two-thirds vote for cities to switch to a public power system.
On the other hand, when a group does have the money for a signature drive, it gains instant credibility. The current effort to legalize marijuana in California was seen as little more than another, ahem, pipe dream before word got out that the backers had the cash to hire a signature gathering team.
And don’t forget that the 2003 effort to recall Gov. Gray Davis was going nowhere until GOP Rep. Darrell Issa put up $1.6 million of his own money for a signature drive. No paid circulators, no Gov. Schwarzenegger.
But Corbett’s bill and two other initiative reform bills the governor vetoed Sunday are just the first wave of a growing effort to change California’s initiative process, which has become an increasingly controversial force in the state’s elections.
But as Schwarzenegger recognized with his vetoes, Californians like their initiatives and will fight any attempt to limit their power to set the state’s policy and make its laws.
In his veto message on Assemblywoman Lori Saldana’s AB 6, a bill that would have tightened the rules on signature gathering companies, the governor made it clear he would be looking closely at any efforts to limit initiatives, even peripherally.
“I cannot support a measure that puts an undue burden on reform-minded Californians,’’ he said.
John Wildermuth is a longtime writer on California politics.