Signature process for ballot measures now for the wealthy
cost $ 2 million to $ 3 million to collect enough signatures to qualify a constitutional amendment for the ballot, said Mike Arno, owner of Arno Petition Consultants. This year it will be more like $ 5 million to $ 7 million.
“I’ve been doing this since 1979, and this is the weirdest year yet,” Arno said.“Everybody is experiencing horrendous pressure.”
Competition intensifying
Seven measures already have enough signatures to get on the November ballot. An additional 79 petitions have been approved to collect signatures. Campaign officials predict that voters will weigh in on about 20 measures this fall — more than double the number of most recent elections.
Only four companies in the state do the bulk of the work to manage petitions and hire crews to get signatures. And as the clock ticks closer to spring deadlines for getting on the ballot, competition for signatures is intensifying.
Three factors combined to cause this year’s glut. First, higher turnout in a presidential election year tends to favor Democrats, encouraging leftleaning groups that want their proposals on the ballot. Second, the Legislature decided a few years ago to prohibit initiatives on the June ballot, moving all of them to November.
The third factor is this year’s low threshold for the number of signatures it takes to qualify a measure for the ballot. The number is determined by votes cast in the last gubernatorial election, which was a record low in 2014.
Exacerbating pressure on the crowded field is a 2013 court ruling that limited where petitions can be circulated. Campaigns can no longer stand outside many grocery stores, so they’re competing to find new places to nab voters.
“There’s a perfect storm of factors that came together to raise the prices across the board,” said Dan Newman, a political consultant who is running campaigns for a gun safety ballot measure and Gov. Jerry Brown’s effort to change criminal sentencing.
The big- money politics involving the cost of signaturegathering surfaced recently in a battle between the tobacco lobby and a coalition of health and labor groups pushing a ballot measure to raise the tax on cigarettes.
Political professionals
Lobbyists for the Altria cigarette company threatened to spike signature- gathering prices to keep the $ 2- per- pack cigarette tax off the ballot, said Dustin Corcoran, head of the California Medical Association, one of the groups sponsoring the measure. They would do it by paying more than double the current price for signatures for a competing measure and hiring up all the signature- gathering firms.
“They made clear that their goal was to drive up the signature price to make it impossible for us to qualify the $ 2 tax for the ballot,” Corcoran said. Altria lobbyists did not return calls for this story.
Direct democracy has spawned an industry of political professionals who make a living from each step of the process. Most of the people who stand on street corners asking you to sign petitions are paid for each signature they get. The price is fluid, depending on how hard it is to explain the measure to voters, how tight the deadline is to get signatures and how many other campaigns are vying for the service.
Ballot cost grows by millions
In recent election years, campaigns would typically pay about a dollar or two per signature. This year, many campaigns are paying $ 3 to $ 4. That raises the cost of putting an initiative on the ballot by between $ 2 million and $ 4 million because of the large number of signatures campaigns must submit.
“It means a higher amount of money you’ve budgeted for your campaign is going for signature- gathering as opposed to voter contact later on. That’s unfortunate,” said Gale Kaufman, a political consultant who is running campaigns to legalize marijuana and extend income taxes approved four years ago by Proposition 30. CALmatters is a nonprofit journalism venture dedicated to explaining state policies and polititics. For more news analysis from Laurel Rosenhall, go to https:// calmatters. org/ news analysis.