Let’s bolster Washington’s public disclosure laws to combat abuse and signature fraud

Edi­tor’s Note: Today, the respec­tive State Gov­ern­ment Com­mit­tees of the Wash­ing­ton State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate held hear­ings on bad­ly-need­ed leg­is­la­tion that would bring the activ­i­ties of our under­ground sig­na­ture gath­er­ing indus­try into the light by adding new report­ing and com­pli­ance require­ments to our pub­lic dis­clo­sure laws. Pas­sage of this leg­is­la­tion is one of NPI’s leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ties for 2018. The fol­low­ing is the unabridged ver­sion of NPI’s founder’s tes­ti­mo­ny in sup­port of both bills. 

Mr. Chair and Mem­bers of the Committee:

Greet­ings, and thank you for this oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak with you.

I’m pleased to be here today on behalf of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute in enthu­si­as­tic sup­port of Sen­ate Bill 5397 and House Bill 1537. Pas­sage of either of these near­ly iden­ti­cal bipar­ti­san bills would bring much need­ed account­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy to the paid sig­na­ture gath­er­ing indus­try in Wash­ing­ton State.

This leg­is­la­tion requires bal­lot mea­sure spon­sors to report to the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion when they hire a firm to under­take a paid sig­na­ture dri­ve on their behalf, and requires sig­na­ture gath­er­ing firms to keep infor­ma­tion about who they are employ­ing on file in case it is need­ed for inves­ti­ga­tion of fraud or misconduct.

Bills with sim­i­lar aims have been pro­posed many times over the past few years, and with each ses­sion, the lan­guage has been improved and refined. The pro­posed sub­sti­tute before you today — vet­ted by both the Sec­re­tary of State’s office as well as the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion — is the best ver­sion yet.

As you know, we already require peo­ple who are paid to lob­by the Leg­is­la­ture to reg­is­ter and file reg­u­lar reports with the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion. Peo­ple who are being paid to lob­by vot­ers to sup­port ini­tia­tives and ref­er­en­da should like­wise be sub­ject to our pub­lic dis­clo­sure laws. The lack of such require­ments can be thought of as an exemp­tion in cur­rent law that needs to be closed.

NPI has been research­ing the busi­ness prac­tices and behav­iors of the paid sig­na­ture gath­er­ing indus­try in Wash­ing­ton State — and beyond — for more than half a decade. What we’ve learned is that this is an indus­try that oper­ates with very lit­tle scruti­ny, over­sight, or respect for our work­er pro­tec­tion laws.

Of par­tic­u­lar con­cern to us is how the com­pa­nies that dom­i­nate this indus­try exploit their work­ers. Sig­na­ture gath­er­ers are typ­i­cal­ly treat­ed like inde­pen­dent con­trac­tors and told they’re respon­si­ble for their own tax­es and employ­ment secu­ri­ty pay­ments, even though they are direct­ed and con­trolled like employees.

Fur­ther­more, com­pen­sa­tion is almost always pro­vid­ed on a per-sig­na­ture basis, which cre­ates an incen­tive for fraud and bad behavior.

The bill’s state­ment that ini­tia­tive fraud is a grow­ing prob­lem is entire­ly accu­rate. The num­ber of instances of sig­na­ture fraud con­tin­ue to increase. For example:

• On June 11th, 2011, the Sec­re­tary of State’s office announced that the sig­na­ture gath­er­ing com­pa­ny that had worked on SEIU’s Ini­tia­tive 1163 (PCI Con­sul­tants) had dis­cov­ered fraud­u­lent sig­na­tures on peti­tions cir­cu­lat­ed by some of its work­ers. The case was referred to the State Patrol.
• On June 11th, 2012, the Sec­re­tary of State’s office announced that the staff of the Elec­tions Divi­sion had found fifty peti­tion sheets that were chock full of fraud­u­lent sig­na­tures. These peti­tions were sub­mit­ted as part of the Ref­er­en­dum 74 sig­na­ture dri­ve, which unsuc­cess­ful­ly attempt­ed to over­turn mar­riage equal­i­ty. The case was referred to the State Patrol.
• On Feb­ru­ary 13th, 2013, the Sec­re­tary of State’s office announced that fraud­u­lent sig­na­tures had been dis­cov­ered on peti­tions cir­cu­lat­ed for Tim Eyman’s I‑517 as well as I‑522, con­cern­ing genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied food label­ing. The case was referred to the State Patrol.
• On Feb­ru­ary 10th, 2017, the Sec­re­tary of State’s office announced that fraud­u­lent sig­na­tures had been dis­cov­ered on ini­tia­tive peti­tions cir­cu­lat­ed in sup­port of four dif­fer­ent mea­sures — I‑1433, I‑1464, I‑1491 and I‑1501 — which all qual­i­fied for the bal­lot via paid sig­na­ture dri­ves. The case was referred to the State Patrol.

We’ve clear­ly got a trou­bling pat­tern on our hands.

Keep in mind that these are just the instances of fraud that are being dis­cov­ered through the process of pro­cess­ing and imag­ing the peti­tions and con­duct­ing ran­dom sam­ple checks. The Sec­re­tary of State does not nor­mal­ly check each and every sig­na­ture sub­mit­ted as part of a peti­tion drive.

So there could be more fraud lurk­ing on peti­tions that we don’t know about.

In our expe­ri­ence, the notion that paid peti­tion­ers have “every incen­tive in the world to be polite” (as Tim Eyman claimed in his tes­ti­mo­ny) is wrong. Since they are paid by the sig­na­ture, they have every incen­tive to be aggres­sive.

Mem­bers of our orga­ni­za­tion have been eye­wit­ness­es to abu­sive con­duct by peti­tion­ers repeat­ed­ly in the last few years… includ­ing cas­es where the police were called and peti­tion­ers tres­passed from the prop­er­ties where they were working.

For exam­ple, in 2015, peti­tion­ers work­ing to col­lect sig­na­tures for Tim Eyman’s I‑1366 were ordered by police to leave a Kirk­land Trad­er Joe’s after cus­tomers report­ed that the peti­tion­ers were behav­ing very aggres­sive­ly and dis­re­spect­ful­ly towards shop­pers who were sim­ply try­ing to get their gro­ceries. One of the peti­tion­ers was curs­ing out peo­ple who declined to sign I‑1366.

Many Wash­ing­to­ni­ans have had expe­ri­ences like this. It is our belief that there would be few­er hos­tile encoun­ters between paid peti­tion­ers and vot­ers if the the peti­tion­ers were bet­ter trained. Appro­pri­ate­ly, Sec­tion 3(h) requires that com­pa­nies in the indus­try pro­vide train­ing to their work­ers before send­ing them out.