Citizens in Charge

Pete Peterson, Executive Director of the Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership at Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy, is the latest to join in the effort to convince California Gov. Jerry Brown to veto Senate Bill 168. Writing at Fox & Hounds Daily, Peterson points out that the culprit of the largest case of petition fraud in recent history was paid by the hour and wouldn’t have been stopped by SB 168:

Meet Claudia McKinney: paid-by-the-hour signature gatherer in Washington state. Ostensibly, Claudia is the kind of person, Sen. Ellen Corbett’s (D-San Leandro) SB 168 is meant to support here in California…Just four months ago in Olympia, Washington, McKinney, was convicted of “felony initiative fraud” and ordered to serve 160 hours of community service and pay fines. Last fall, McKinney - paid by the hour - was getting signatures for an income tax proposition…After submitting her signature sheets, elections officials quickly noticed that hundreds of signings were in the same pen, in the same style. Investigations…confirmed that McKinney had, in fact, submitted over 300 fraudulent signatures.

SB 168 bans paying petition circulators by the signature, which supporters of the bill claim encourages fraud. As the McKinney case shows, the story of petition fraud painted by 168’s supporters just doesn’t match up with reality.

Peterson gets down to the brass tax:

Of course paid signature gatherers annoy us all in our local supermarket parking lots, and we acknowledge that most are probably doing this just for the cash. But this is a “civic burden” Californians should bear in order to keep our ballots accessible to both rich and “poor” - organized and disorganized - alike. On this measure about signatures, Governor Brown, I ask that you leave yours off the  ”Approved” line.

Call the Governor’s office at (916) 445-2841 and respectfully ask him to protect California’s petition process and VETO Senate Bill 168!