California: Sign a petition from your smart-phone
Want something new to blame for all those arcane initiatives to sort out on Election Day? A new Silicon Valley company launched a smartphone app on Tuesday that promises to get rid of the scroungy-looking guy begging strangers for signatures outside Trader Joe’s by turning your finger into a pen and your iPhone into a political weapon. The company, Verafirma, touts the technology as the ultimate grass-roots tool that would bring a smile to the face of Gov. Hiram Johnson, the California populist who nearly a century ago helped add “initiative, referendum and recall” to the state lexicon.