Politicians bid to alter state initiative process

Proponents of the controversial General Plan Initiative will seek a speedy reversal of a federal judge's ruling Thursday that blocks -- for now -- their measure from Monterey County voters.

Backers of the stymied land-use measure will file an urgent appeal of U.S. District Court Judge James Ware's ruling that the initiative violates federal election law, their attorney Fredric Woocher said.

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In his ruling, Ware said the general-plan measure proposed by slow-growth advocates violated the federal Voting Rights Act because initiative petitions weren't circulated in both English and Spanish to prospective voters.

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The federal cases hinged on a controversial November decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that rejected an Orange County recall petition over the absence of Spanish-language materials.

Ware's decision hinged entirely on that ruling. He said the requirement for multilingual election materials is more critical in initiative campaigns than in recall efforts.

"With respect to initiative petitions, the authority of local agencies is even greater," the judge said. "County elections officials not only review them, they draft a portion that is critical to the public's understanding of them."

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http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/14175993.htm

National Petition Management (NPM) is certainly not the only signature-collector-for-hire firm out there - California-based Kimball Petition Management, for example, is frequently mentioned as NPM's chief competitor. However, because of NPM's extensive work in Michigan - and the fact that it is apparently (?) headquartered in our state - it makes for an interesting case study.

Depending what newspaper article you're reading, NPM is either a Michigan company or a California company. According to incorporation documents on file with the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Growth, NPM is registered in California. Incorporation information on file with the State of California give NPM's current address as Brighton, Michigan - and list Lee B. Albright as the firm's president.

Here in Michigan, you may have seen NPM in the news a lot lately. They're the friendly folks that Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson plans to pay $800,000 to collect over 300,000 petition signatures supporting his plan to cut the state budget by $1.9 billion dollars. If NPM comes through - and they probably will - the Republcan controlled state Legislature will be able to eliminate the state Single Business Tax without the approval of Governor Granholm or the voters of Michigan.

The Patterson-DeVos plan to gut the state budget isn't the only one of NPM's recent Michigan projects. And then there was 2004's infamous proposal attacking the civil rights of gays and lesbians. As a matter of fact, here's a list of NPM's Michigan projects

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http://www.michiganliberal.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4993

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif.—It's a sellers' market in names this month, and Fred Kimball loves it. "I call it the business of politics," Kimball says of his company that collects signatures for ballot initiatives, and business these days is very good.

After negotiations with California Gov. Pete Wilson (R) yielded only an unsatisfactory compromise, 32 Indian tribes decided late in March to ask for voter approval of a measure that would legalize video slots, blackjack and off-track betting at reservation sites.

The initiative hit the streets March 25 and, with less than 30 days left to collect 403,269 valid signatures to place it on the November ballot, the sponsors authorized Kimball and Lee Albright of National Petition Management to pay signature collectors the premium rate of $1.50 per name.

That had an immediate impact on rival firms trying to beat the same deadline for qualifying initiatives on eight other subjects for the November ballot. "When we hit the streets at $1.50," Kimball remarked a few days later, "it moved the other petitions further down the line." Professional signature gatherers, carrying most or all of the nine, first ask people to sign the one paying the most.

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http://sitesearch.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/keyraces98/stories/key041198.htm

The price paid for signatures is usually around a dollar a signature, though it can go higher. National Petition president LeeAlbright told one reporter in 1999 that, depending on the difficulty of the issue and the availablity of workers, the bounty ranges between $1 and $1.50.

National Petition Management is generally regarded as a conservative firm. It has been involved in getting anti-gay and anti-affirmative action measures on the ballot in several jurisdictions.

Of particular interest in Nevada is a 2002 ballot measure in Michigan. National Petition was hired by the healthcare lobby to get a measure on the ballot that, if enacted, would have taken tobacco settlement money away from 50,000 students for scholarships and given the money to health care. Nevada has a similar scholarship progam. The Michigan measure was defeated.

Many Nevada leaders, particularly conservatives, are becoming increasingly concerned about the sales pitches used by signature gatherers. Many of those pitches have little relationship to the actual content of the ballot measures. GOP Sens. Barbara Cegavske and Dennis Nolan of Clark County have filed bill draft requests for legislation to try to address the problem of misleading pitches.

http://www.newsreview.com/reno/Content?oid=oid%3A23170

Name: Lee Albright
Type of Membership: Individual
Company: National Petition Management, Inc.
Title: NA
Website: NA
Phone: (517) 485-2520
FAX: 916-774-9518
Address:
5281 River Ridge Drive
Brighton, MI 48116
USA
http://www.theaapc.org/content/membership/2002/member_profile.asp?id=2372


National Petition Management, Inc.
Lee Albright
3300 Douglas Blvd., Ste. 400
Roseville, CA 95661
916-774-0634
http://www.highbeam.com/library/docfree.asp?DOCID=1G1:72891208&ctrlInfo=Round19%3AMode19b%3ADocG%3AResult&ao=

COLUMBIA, Mo. - Shaun Sachs has never held elective office. The 40-year-old former factory worker and doughnut shop employee isn't even registered to vote.

Dressed in corduroy pants, a camouflage hunting jacket, a Brad Smith replica football jersey and a tattered University of Missouri baseball cap, he hardly strikes an imposing figure outside the University of Missouri-Columbia student union.

Appearances aside, Sachs could be one of the most powerful, if little known, figures in Missouri politics this year.

As a paid signature collector, Sachs is part of a close-knit network - think traveling salesmen or freight-hopping carnival crews - who will largely determine whether proposed statewide initiatives on stem cell research, tobacco tax increases and eminent domain limits not only get approved, but whether those measures even make it on the ballot for voter consideration.

In the open-air market that is voter signature gathering, the Millersburg resident and his ilk wield considerable power - if not passionate political views.

"I'm not an activist or a volunteer. I've got to eat," Sachs said. "It's all about a buck."

That's the going rate for each of the roughly 145,000 signatures Sachs and other paid gatherers need to collect on behalf of the Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures, a group of business leaders, researchers and patient advocates who want to add a state constitutional amendment protecting embryonic stem cell research and possible treatments.

If he surpasses 500 signatures in a week, the rate for each signature increases to $1.50 a pop.

Sachs is actually an independent contractor for National Petition Management, a Brighton, Mich.-based company paid $120,000 by the coalition in late 2005 as a down payment to ensure that the necessary signatures are collected by the May 9 deadline.

With 16 petitions approved for public circulation by the Secretary of State's office so far this year, and three making the statewide ballot in 2004, Missouri is hardly the leader among states in the initiative arms race.

That distinction is often won by petition-happy California, where more than 60 were approved for circulation in 2005. Signature collection companies there earn millions annually.

But for critics like Jaci Winship, executive director of Missourians Against Human Cloning, which opposes the stem cell ballot measure, the infusion of moneyed interests into what began as an effort to bring lawmaking closer to the people is cause for concern.

"They will say just about anything," she said, referring to signature collectors. "It's a moneymaking project."

For Robin Acree, a Mexico, Mo., community organizer working to add a Medicaid reform measure to the November statewide ballot, the use of paid signature gatherers is a luxury her group just can't afford.

Using "all volunteers and no big money," the People's Agenda Fund has collected roughly 30 percent of the 105,000 signatures needed, she said. Unlike the stem cell effort, the Medicaid reform proposal is not a proposed change to the state constitution, making the minimum threshold for signatures lower.

"I think we're at an advantage," said Acree, executive director of Grass Roots Organizing. "We're not just collecting signatures ... we're engaging people in an issue they care about."

A signature company offered to help collect those names, said Acree - for $1 million.

"It's just ridiculous," she said. "We don't have those kind of funds."

Efforts to rein in unsavory signature collectors - or at least require full, public disclosure - have arisen in several states, including Maine, Massachusetts and California.

Still, the realities of modern politics dictate that campaigns such as the stem cell research camp use professionals, said Donn Rubin, executive director of the coalition.

more
http://www.belleville.com/mld/belleville/news/state/14179285.htm

WORCESTER Some supporters of a ballot initiative that would make it easier to buy wine at supermarkets were duped into signing petitions aimed at reversing the 2003 ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court that allows same-sex marriages, the Telegram & Gazette has learned.

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Mr. Flynn said the MFA contracted with California-based National Petition Management to exclusively gather support for the wine initiative.

He added, however, that at least six collectors had also collected signatures at grocery stores, including the Shaws on Gold Star Boulevard, for the anti-gay-marriage petition, using deceptive and illegal tactics.

We are very disturbed by the actions of these rogue operators, said Judy Chong, a spokeswoman for the Bridgeport, Conn.-based Shaws chain, which allowed contractors hired by National Petition Management to collect signatures at its outlets.

She said managers have been warned to keep a close eye on individuals gathering signatures at their stores, and asked customers to immediately report any suspicions to Shaws management.

Meanwhile, Corey Welford, a spokesman for Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly, said the office has received complaints about fraudulent attempts to get people to sign the anti-gay marriage petition.

The Telegram & Gazette also received a number of calls and e-mails from concerned residents, who believe they were snookered.

Residents told the newspaper they were asked by the solicitors to sign a petition that would allow more food retailers to sell wine. After they signed that petition, they said they were asked to place another signature on a second document that was hidden under the initiative they originally were shown.

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http://www.knowthyneighbor.org/100405.html

Good to see Massachusetts officials are starting to look into the practices and tactics of the signature gatherers. After multiple reports of deceptive techniques and ill-informed signature gatherers, the spotlight is on National Petition Management (and hopefully any other groups involved...I suspect they are not the only forces employed by the ballot initiative proponents). Here's what NPM says on their site:

People call National Petition Management when failure is not an option.

Like I said before, this "play dirty and win at all costs" mindset is troubling. And get this:

National Petition Management, which has faced allegations of similar shady practices in other states, did not return calls yesterday.

The company was hired by the Massachusetts Food Association exclusively to gather signatures at area stores for the supermarket petition. Workers are paid per signature.

Christopher Flynn, the association's president, said his organization is tossing hundreds of signatures gathered by six workers for the alcohol petition because the workers used deceptive and illegal practices to also gather signatures for the anti-gay marriage petition, according to the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.

Neither the association nor voteonmarriage.org, the group that aims to get the anti-gay marriage initiative on the 2008 ballot, could explain how some supermarket signature-gatherers ended up circulating the anti-gay marriage petition.

Here's what Tom Lang, director of Know Thy Neighbor suspects:

There were two out-of-state companies hired to collect signatures. The Massachusetts Food Association hired one to collect for the beer/wine petition and our foes hired the other company. From what we can see, we believe that both of these petition companies draw from the same "labor" pool and outsourced or sub-contracted labor. Therefore, in my opinion, the two companies were either directly or indirectly working together.

Now since it seems, as you point out, that the "technique" of signature collection with the two petitions being worked together is consistent across the state, one might deduce that a "single order" was given. I do not believe for one minute that any of these signature collectors acted on their own accord without clear explanations of techniques, what to say, how to fraud, etc. And that they were well instructed. The emails that KTN.org has received from all over the state plus our own personal field observations are too consistent. But that is only my "opinion."

http://www.acepryhill.com/archives/001264.html

But how can a signature gathering firm like National Voter Outreach support and further direct democracy, usually thought of as the ability of ordinary citizens to fight for a specific cause through ballot initiatives, when the firm itself is a hired gun with no ties to the community? A fairly outrageous situation involving paid signature gatherers arose in Massachusetts in 2002 when Phoenix-based Ballot Access Company was hired simultaneously by two separate Massachusetts groups to get their initiatives on the ballot. Ballot Access found it easy to get signatures for a measure sponsored by animal rights group Save Our Horses to end the slaughter of horses for human consumption, but harder to convince Massachusetts voters to sign a petition calling for a ban on gay marriage. According to a suit filed by Save Our Horses, since Ballot Access was getting paid more per signature for the gay marriage initiative, signature collectors were instructed to perform a bait-and-switch. Jason Hampton, a Ballot Access signature gatherer, testified via affidavit that since it was "hard" to get marriage petition signatures, his superiors instructed him to talk up the horse slaughter issue to "sell people," and then have unsuspecting voters sign the marriage initiative on a clipboard pre-prepared to be deceptive.

...

Paid signature gathering companies are also firmly linked to the world's largest retailer. Earlier this year Wal-Mart hired a professional firm, National Petition Management, to fight a Contra Costa, California anti-sprawl ordinance limiting the square footage of any new retailer in the county to 90,000. Community groups aligned against Wal-Mart were forced to use whatever resources they could to fight the professionals. "They've got these professional signature-gatherers from out of town. They're basically carpetbaggers," said one anti-Wal-Mart activist. Yet despite the efforts of community groups, Wal-Mart's army of signature gatherers succeeded in placing the referendum on the ballot, and voters then approved Wal-Mart's plan to overturn the town ordinance and allow construction of a new store.

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http://www.acsblog.org/voting-rights-democracy-96-democracy-for-sale-the-signature-gathering-industry.html

Claussen, the group's general manager, said he hired a pair of California companies several weeks ago to coordinate the gathering of signatures for Schwarzenegger's ballot initiatives.

He said the companies -- National Petition Management and American Petition Consultants -- in turn contracted with an Oregon firm called TechSpeed to handle the labor-intensive task of typing in all names gathered, for electronic verification.

TechSpeed's headquarters is in Portland, but the company does most of its work in the Indian city of Pune.

Richard Plainfield, TechSpeed's co-founder, said he was prevented by confidentiality agreements from discussing individual clients.

He acknowledged, however, that "we use our facility in India to do the work for our customers," and noted that such work can be performed abroad for a fraction of the cost of doing it in the United States.

Zaremberg, co-chair of Citizens to Save California, said the decision to outsource the petition drive was primarily a factor of the "very, very short time frame in which we can collect signatures."

The group is attempting to gather about 5 million signatures by the end of next month.

"Time is of the essence," Zaremberg said.

Claussen, the general manager, said many political campaigns outsource petition work, and there's nothing surprising about the more labor-intensive aspects of that job being handled by overseas workers.

More
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/03/08/BUGRGBLTE11.DTL

Back in July, Judge Charles McCoy dismissed a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles by Taxpayers Against the Governor’s Recall charging widespread fraud in the collection of 1.6 million signatures which forced the special Oct. 7 election on the recall of California Gov. Gray Davis.

But an angry backlash is gathering steam against both the recall and Proposition 54, Ward Connerly’s measure that would outlaw collection of data on race, an attempt to nullify the Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding affirmative action.

Both ballot measures have been denounced as a perversion of the original purpose of the recall and ballot proposition laws adopted nearly a century ago under Gov. Hiram Johnson to break the corrupt stranglehold on all levels of government by the Southern Pacific Railroad and other corporate giants. Now these measures are being used by the wealthy to nullify and overturn the will of the people.

In arguing against the recall, attorney Paul R. Kiesel told the court, “This lawsuit challenges the legitimacy of out-of-state professional signature gatherers hiring felons and non-registered voters to gather signatures.” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a San Diego millionaire, plowed nearly $3 million of his own car alarm fortune into the project, paying professional petition circulators $1 per signature to collect the names needed to win ballot status. His “Rescue California” front group brought in Republican Tom Bader, described as a “retired California signature-gathering executive” now living in Missouri, to orchestrate the drive. Even though the recall was driven by cold corporate cash, it is presented in the media as a “grassroots rebellion” by angry Californians against Davis, reelected just 10 months ago.

“This lawsuit contends that the proponents of this recall hired these bounty hunters in order to promote their conservative agenda and stick the California taxpayers with a $30 million to $50 million bill for their special election,” Kiesel charged.

The anti-recall group submitted affadavits to prove their case. In one, William Byrd, a petition gatherer whose real residence is Tacoma, Wash., testified that the company instructed him to register to vote in California using as his address the Travel Lodge in Pomona where they were housing him.

Kim Dickson, a resident of Arizona, was told to register using as her address the Red Roof Inn in Santa Ana where the petition company was putting her up. Judge McCoy brushed all this aside, arguing that he was bound to uphold the “rights” of who those signed the petitions.

There is ample precedent for people going into a state not their own to circulate petitions on vital issues or to get an independent candidate on the ballot. These petitioners are usually volunteers motivated by their commitment to principle. But the ultra-right increasingly depends on for-profit corporations to put its anti-labor, racist propositions on the ballot, a grotesque parody of real “grassroots” activism.

Take for example National Petition Management, Inc., of Roseville, Calif. Headed by Republican entrepreneur Lee Albright, NPM describes itself as a “full-service petition management company” with a “performance record virtually unmatched in the industry.” The NPM web site proclaims, “With our vast experience we are able to assist our clients on a variety of fronts – from qualifying local and statewide measures and conducting voter registration drives to assisting in grassroots signature gathering and one-on-one grassroots contact work … . At NPM, we will take the guesswork out of your campaign and ensure your success. We hire and train signature coordinators and circulators. We verify the validity of signatures.”

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http://www.pww.org/article/view/4138/1/182/