cannabisnews.com: Petition Backers Pony Up





Petition Backers Pony Up
Posted by FoM on January 23, 2000 at 06:53:00 PT
By Liz Ruskin, Daily News Reporter 
Source: Anchorage Daily News
For months, Al Anders has been standing in front of post offices with a clipboard, hitting up passers-by for their signatures. He'd start with his petition to legalize marijuana in Alaska. If he sold you on that, he'd often pull out another petition, to lower property taxes or to put the Constitution Party on the national ballot or to start a new system for electing candidates. He is paid to collect signatures, usually a $1 for each one. It's honest work, he says. 
"There's nothing disgraceful about getting paid to get signatures," he said. To get an issue on the Alaska ballot by petition, paid signature gathering has become the norm. In 1998, four of the five initiatives on the state ballot employed paid circulators. And each of the three petitions submitted for the 2000 ballot - capping property taxes, legalizing marijuana, raising the minimum wage - paid people to collect at least some of the signatures, according to the Division of Elections. How much they paid or where they got the money isn't a matter of public record in Alaska, but state law says no collector can be paid more than $1 a signature. It's "virtually impossible" to collect the nearly 23,000 signatures needed to get on the ballot using only volunteers, said Kevin Harun, who backed a 1998 anti-billboard initiative when he directed Alaska Center for the Environment Anchorage lawyer Ken Jacobus, an active Republican who sponsored an initiative two years ago and is working on another this year, agreed. "You have to have a number of people who are willing to work for a year or a year and a half and devoting their lives to it," he said. Or if you have the money, you could simply hire an outfit like National Voter Outreach in Carson City, Nev. THE PROFESSIONALS National Voter Outreach does it all: printing the petitions, hiring the signature gatherers, completing the paperwork. "They deliver a finished product," Jacobus said. Two years ago, when Jacobus was working on an initiative to make English Alaska's official language, his group hired the Nevada firm. "I really never saw the petitions until they were delivered, all signed," Jacobus said. "They're real professionals." The for-profit company is part of an "initiative industry" operating nationwide, said Elisabeth Gerber, a political science professor at the University of California San Diego. For a price, these companies can get all the signatures you need to put your issue before voters. "In California, if you have $1 million, you're virtually assured a place on the ballot," she said. In Alaska, it takes fewer signatures to qualify, so it's much cheaper. Rick Arnold, one of the founders of National Voter Outreach, said his company worked on several Alaska initiatives when it was here for the 1997-98 election season. Typically, the company sends a subcontractor to the state to manage the effort. The subcontractor places ads and hires locals to collect the signatures. The rates vary, but in its last Alaska effort, the company's bid price was about $1.56 per signature, Arnold said. If you figure that most groups like to reach about 40,000 signatures before they submit their petitions, that would come to about $62,000. Arnold said he doesn't necessarily support the measures his company works on, but he believes in the initiative process. It's a safety valve that allows people to circumvent their elected officials to make the laws they want. Money doesn't change that, he said. "Certainly politics today is money," he said. "It's money no matter what kind of politics it is or how you do it. ... Sure, it means that Bill Gates can get almost anything he wants on the ballot in Washington state. But is that wrong?" Money doesn't guarantee voters will adopt it, he said. Professor Gerber's research backs him up. She studied 168 initiative campaigns in eight states. "In all of those states, it's not the big-money measures that tend to pass," she said. "In fact, the more money that is spent, the less likely it is to pass." How much money was spent to get initiatives on the 2000 ballot isn't clear since Alaska law doesn't require petition campaigns to disclose the information. Uwe Kalenka, the prime sponsor of the initiative to cap local property taxes at 10 mills, has said he used paid circulators at the beginning but then found he didn't need them. A co-sponsor, Scott Kohlhaas, estimated that about 25 percent of the 40,000 signatures gathered for that petition came from paid circulators. The measure to legalize marijuana got a sizable contribution from California-based hemp crusader Jack Herer, organizers said. The initiative to raise the minimum wage has union backing. Its circulators were paid by the AFL-CIO, according to the petitions they submitted to the Division of Elections.  Published: January 23, 2000Copyright © 1999 The Anchorage Daily News Related Article:Christian Coalition Fined For Election Misstep - 11/03/99http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread3534.shtml
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Comment #2 posted by Happy on January 23, 2000 at 23:29:54 PT
Bad Link
Sorry
Gaskin for president
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Comment #1 posted by Happy on January 23, 2000 at 23:20:54 PT:
Please:I found at least two petitions to Circulate
If I could get a dollar a signature, I would be more able to help get pot legal in Michigan, the Green Party's candidate Stephen Gaskin on the ballot, and maybe legislature and tort reform on the ballot. I am sure it would barely pay for gas, but right now I have to do that.Is there anyone out there who would help to decriminalize Michigan and The Green Party like that with contributions for volunteers?If the link below doesn't work, use this one:http://clubs.excite.com/comm/area/pw/welcome/main.asp?cid=.mJO-5CJgHTS&aid=22&auth=for Green Party Links:http://stephen2000.org
PRA2000 link
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