SB 5375 would bring needed accountability to Washington’s signature gathering industry

Edi­tor’s Note: The fol­low­ing are the remarks I pre­pared as the basis for my spo­ken tes­ti­mo­ny in favor of SB 5375. This bill was sup­posed to be heard by the Sen­ate Gov­ern­ment Oper­a­tions and Secu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee today. I nev­er got a chance to tes­ti­fy in favor of SB 5375 because com­mit­tee chair Pam Roach refused to allow me and oth­ers (includ­ing a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the Sec­re­tary of State’s office) to speak. Read more about how the hear­ing turned into The Pam Roach Show. 

Good morn­ing, Madam Chair and mem­bers of the committee:

For the record, my name is Andrew Vil­leneuve.  I am the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, based out of Red­mond. I’m pleased to be here today on behalf of our team to express our strong sup­port for Sen­ate Bill 5375. We’d like to offer our pro­found thanks to Marko Liias for spon­sor­ing it.

We believe this bill does two very impor­tant things: it pro­tects work­ers who gath­er sig­na­tures on peti­tions from unscrupu­lous employ­ers look­ing to exploit their labor, and it pro­tects the pub­lic by deter­ring sig­na­ture fraud and harass­ment of cit­i­zens by untrained work­ers, which are grow­ing, doc­u­ment­ed problems.

If this bill were an attack on the peo­ple’s right to make laws, as has been argued here this morn­ing, we would not be sup­port­ing it.

The ini­tia­tive, ref­er­en­dum, and recall are use­ful tools for bypass­ing a grid­locked Leg­is­la­ture, and they have been used for that pur­pose many times, such as when the vot­ers cre­at­ed the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion in the 1970s.

We want to see the ini­tia­tive process strength­ened and returned to the peo­ple. It belongs to the cit­i­zens of Wash­ing­ton, not to out of state corporations.

Data com­piled by the Sec­re­tary of State’s office shows that we have a grow­ing sig­na­ture fraud prob­lem. Large batch­es of fraud­u­lent sig­na­tures have been dis­cov­ered on peti­tions year after year.

On August 16th, 2013, the Everett Her­ald ran a sto­ry on our grow­ing sig­na­ture fraud prob­lem. The Her­ald’s Eric Ste­vick report­ed:

Get­ting to the truth has been elusive.

Bob Calkins, a spokesman for the Wash­ing­ton State Patrol, said some inves­ti­ga­tions have run into dead-ends.

“Not only were the sig­na­tures fraud­u­lent, but the iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion about the sig­na­ture gath­er­er was fraud­u­lent and we were nev­er able to run that down to an indi­vid­ual per­son,” he said. “So those oth­er cas­es we were unable to take for­ward for prosecution.”

Over the past few months, our team has had sev­er­al con­ver­sa­tions with the Ore­gon Sec­re­tary of State’s office, which imple­ment­ed major reforms to their ini­tia­tive process sev­er­al years ago. Ore­gon now requires paid peti­tion­ers to reg­is­ter and pass a back­ground check. They also adopt­ed a law to stop the abu­sive prac­tice of bal­lot title shop­ping… repeat­ed­ly fil­ing mul­ti­ple iter­a­tions of a mea­sure in attempt to get a good bal­lot title. These reforms have been very successful.

In fact, the Ore­gon Sec­re­tary of State’s office tells us that over the course of the last two cycles they’ve actu­al­ly had an uptick in the num­ber of grass­roots style petitions.

There was, of course, some grum­bling when Ore­gon put its new laws into effect, but that’s since dis­si­pat­ed. The free­dom to peti­tion remains alive and well in the Beaver State today. The pub­lic can have more con­fi­dence in Ore­gon’s process.

Wash­ing­ton has a strong tra­di­tion of open, trans­par­ent gov­ern­ment. It’s why we require pro­fes­sion­al lob­by­ists to reg­is­ter with the state and dis­close their deal­ings with law­mak­ers. Peo­ple who are being paid to lob­by Wash­ing­to­ni­ans in their capac­i­ties as cit­i­zen law­mak­ers should like­wise be required to reg­is­ter with the state. To pro­tect the right to freely and anony­mous­ly peti­tion, this bill exempts peti­tion­ers’ per­son­al infor­ma­tion, includ­ing con­tact infor­ma­tion, from pub­lic dis­clo­sure. It strikes the right bal­ance between trans­paren­cy and privacy.

Ore­gon’s expe­ri­ence shows us that sub­ject­ing the paid sig­na­ture gath­er­ing indus­try to over­sight and account­abil­i­ty results in a stronger ini­tia­tive process with more grass­roots activ­i­ty. That’s exact­ly what we need here in Wash­ing­ton. This thought­ful­ly craft­ed bill is ready to become part of the Revised Code of Wash­ing­ton. We urge you to pass it out of com­mit­tee with a “do pass” recommendation.