While putting together the program for a free, public international conference on initiative and referendum (it’s called the 2010 Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy and you can register here:), I’ve been hearing dozens of accounts of the strange ballot initiative qualification season that has just been concluded.
The season was puzzling. Why did it seem to cost just as much as always to gather signatures – even in the midst of a crippling recession that should have made it easy to find people to circulate initiative petitions cheaply? And why did the signatures come so slowly-causing delays that saw a half-dozen initiative sponsors turn in signatures far too close to the deadline for comfort?
The answer I’ve received from a half-a-dozen players in the signature game?
Federal extensions of unemployment insurance screwed up the usual incentives, and thus sowed chaos.
I scratched my head at first, and then got this explanation.
The big petition companies, like everyone else, figured at first they could gather signatures relatively cheaply and so gave relatively low prices to initiative sponsors. Those sponsors, assuming that it would be relatively easy to get signatures, took their sweet time before putting measures out on the street.
But when it came time to hire gatherers and put them out on the street, it was difficult to find people. Many of the usual gatherers were happily collecting federal unemployment insurance, and, given the low per-signature prices, didn’t stand to make much more money by going out on the street. Circulators preferred to stay unemployed. Two regional coordinators with whom spoke said that signature gatherers were saying they would work only if paid "under the table" – so that their unemployment insurance payments would continue uninterrupted.
This created two problems. Signatures were more expensive than expected, upsetting some initiative sponsors. And signatures came much more slowly than expected. All those late-arriving signatures put unprecedented pressure on the county clerks, nearly all of which have been struggling with budget cuts, to verify signatures very quickly to make sure measures qualified for the ballot.
In the end, every initiative campaign that turned in signatures at the last minute made the November ballot. But at every level of the process, from petition companies to the clerks, there’s a strong feeling of: we can’t let this happen again.