What’s the price of a signature?

Last night I made a late night run to the gro­cery store and was sur­prised to see a woman with a clip­board by the front entrance ask­ing peo­ple com­ing in and out to sign some form of peti­tion. It’s not uncom­mon to see this at Safe­way; the entrance is a bot­tle­neck for all traf­fic in and out and a favorite spot for poll­sters and pan­han­dlers alike. What was odd was that there would be some­one col­lect­ing sig­na­tures at near­ly midnight.

After scour­ing the aisles for the sale items so that I could have a decent meal with the six bucks I had in my pock­et, I came out to find her still at it. Close up, she looked as though she might have been pan­han­dling in the same spot if it were a dif­fer­ent night. It was­n’t her miss­ing teeth that gave me that impres­sion. Instead it was the sad com­bi­na­tion of her des­per­ate body lan­guage and the dead look in her eyes.

«Will you sign a peti­tion?» she asked.

I’m no longer in the habit of sign­ing peti­tions. Espe­cial­ly here in Cal­i­for­nia it’s too darn easy to col­lect the req­ui­site sig­na­tures to get some bone­head­ed idea on the bal­lot. Yes, it’s democ­ra­cy in action, but we’re not sup­posed to be a democ­ra­cy. There is a com­plex sys­tem of checks and bal­ances that, imper­fect as it is, pro­tects us not just from the tyran­ny of an elite, but also from the tyran­ny of the major­i­ty. Bal­lot ini­tia­tives are sup­posed to be anoth­er one of those checks and bal­ances, not a pri­ma­ry form of get­ting leg­is­la­tion passed. Giv­en that with enough mon­ey, you can pay peo­ple to stand in front of gro­cery stores until you get enough sig­na­tures, I think the whole sys­tem of bal­lot ini­tia­tives in Cal­i­for­nia has been cor­rupt­ed. I don’t even put my sig­na­ture down for things I agree with.

I asked the woman if this were for a bal­lot ini­tia­tive. She said that it was, so I apol­o­gized and began to move on. Then she asked, «are you a fan of Obama?»

Oh boy. There’s a ques­tion I can’t answer com­plete­ly in one sen­tence. Am I a fan? Absolute­ly. Am I a sup­port­er? No. But the woman with the clip­board instead of her front teeth had caught me off guard. She added, «I have Oba­ma mag­nets.» It took me a moment for it to reg­is­ter: she was offer­ing me an Oba­ma cam­paign mag­net for my refrig­er­a­tor if I’d sign. I smiled and said, «thank you, no.» I start­ed walking.

Then she dropped the bomb: «Please? They give me a buck fifty for each signature.»

I think it would have been insult­ing to explain that that was exact­ly the rea­son I was not sign­ing. But it felt ter­ri­ble to walk away know­ing that this woman, obvi­ous­ly not a per­son of means, was work­ing to put food on the table, and that my sig­na­ture would cost me no mon­ey and gain her some. She was doing hon­est work for much-need­ed money.

But that is how crap ini­tia­tives get on the bal­lot: peo­ple sign because they don’t care, because they think it won’t hurt any­thing to get some­thing on the bal­lot if they can vote against it lat­er, to get these peo­ple with clip­boards out of their hair. It’s a way for lob­by­ing groups (whether grass-roots or cor­po­rate) to use mon­ey rather than pop­u­lar sup­port to pro­mote what­ev­er their agen­da is.

If I’d had two dol­lars left in my pock­et at that moment, I’d have giv­en it to her. My endorse­ment for a piece of pro­posed leg­is­la­tion is not for sale. But last night, that deci­sion hurt.

4 Replies to “What’s the price of a signature?”

  1. I agree, sort of.….

    .…but I have a lit­tle dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive. I’m on the board of direc­tors for a local area meal site/Meals on Wheels pro­gram. This year I spent sev­er­al hours (that’s all it took to get more than enough sig­na­tures!) col­lect­ing sig­na­tures to get an $5000 appro­pri­a­tions request on the town bud­get. Our bud­get is over $150,000, and although we get a small amount from the local Area Agency on Aging, most of our rev­enue comes from pri­vate fundrais­ing. The local busi­ness­es are very gen­er­ous and we have sev­er­al oth­er fundrais­ers each year, but I see noth­ing wrong in ask­ing the peo­ple of the com­mu­ni­ty we serve if they would like to kick in. I know that it would be bet­ter to go door-to-door ask­ing for dona­tions direct­ly, but we just don’t have the time or the man­pow­er. (BTW, every year our request is almost unan­i­mous­ly approved, which is extra­or­di­nar­i­ly rare in appro­pri­a­tions requests.) We per­form an impor­tant mis­sion, but rais­ing mon­ey for it is a full time job for the board. Although I would rather do it entire­ly with pri­vate fund­ing, the town bud­get request also gives us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to stand up in front of the town and make them aware of what we do.

    The bot­tom line is: unless I can come up with a new way to raise the mon­ey before then, I’ll prob­a­bly be out there with a clip­board again next year. I see it as ben­e­fit­ing the com­mu­ni­ty sim­i­lar to the way schools or police do. I’m lib­er­tar­i­an enough to know it is not the per­fect solu­tion, but I am prag­mat­ic enough that I can live eith it.

    Dad

    1. Democ­ra­cy inaction

      Hey, I’m not uni­ver­sal­ly opposed to col­lect­ing sig­na­tures. What I have trou­ble with is the idea of paid work­ers col­lect­ing sig­na­tures to get ini­tia­tives on a bal­lot before vot­ers. In Cal­i­for­nia, if you get 500,000 sig­na­tures from reg­is­tered vot­ers (800,00 if you want to amend the State Con­sti­tu­tion) you can put any old thing in front of the vot­ers for an up or down vote (those num­bers are based on the num­ber of vot­ers from the pre­vi­ous election.)

      If you want a chance at get­ting some­thing passed into law in San Fran­cis­co (say, to ban hand­gun own­er­ship, name a sewage plant for the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, or ban cir­cum­ci­sion of chil­dren) all you need are 9500 sig­na­tures. That’s a long way from get­ting appro­pri­a­tions for Meals on Wheels on your town budget.

      I appre­ci­ate that cit­i­zens should have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate direct­ly in gov­ern­ment. Ver­mon­t’s town meet­ings should be a bea­con for the rest of the coun­try. But in Cal­i­for­nia, things are out of hand. It’s not that I don’t like democ­ra­cy, but I’m a big­ger fan of checks and bal­ances. It also seems dis­taste­ful for work­ers who don’t even believe in the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion and who are paid by the sig­na­ture to get things on the bal­lot by telling peo­ple that it does­n’t mat­ter, that their sig­na­ture just gets the mat­ter on the bal­lot and so there’s no harm.

      Peo­ple will sign any­thing.

  2. I Am In Favor of a Con­sti­tu­tion­al Republic

    I don’t like peo­ple get­ting paid per sig­na­ture. Peri­od. Sounds … bad.

    1. Good dis­tinc­tion

      Actu­al­ly two good dis­tinc­tions there: first that the ide­al form of gov­ern­ment is not democ­ra­cy but a con­sti­tu­tion­al repub­lic with demo­c­ra­t­ic over­sight. Or maybe «with demo­c­ra­t­ic over­sight» is built in to the word «repub­lic» and my addi­tion is redun­dant. In any case, the Framers were well aware of the dan­gers of democ­ra­cy — oth­er­wise we’d have one and things would be very very dif­fer­ent today.

      But the dis­tinc­tion I meant when I wrote the sub­ject of this reply is «per sig­na­ture». I don’t fun­da­men­tal­ly object to the idea that peo­ple who col­lect sig­na­tures are work­ing, are wor­thy of their hire, and can be paid for their time. Being paid per sig­na­ture cross­es a line.

      I can’t say I have a solu­tion. Sure­ly out­law­ing com­mis­sion-based com­pen­sa­tion for peo­ple col­lect­ing sig­na­tures would have First Amend­ment issues even if it were prac­ti­cal­ly enforce­able. And there’s no way it could be enforce­able. Sig­na­ture col­lec­tion com­pa­nies could set up mul­ti­ple job titles with var­ied lev­els of hourly pay, and «pro­mote» or «demote» employ­ees every day (or even every hour!) based on their per­for­mance. If I can come up with a way around such a law off the top of my head, there’s no way the law would be enforceable.

      My next thought would be to require that sig­na­ture col­lec­tion only be valid if it is con­duct­ed in a town or city’s munic­i­pal offices and that cit­i­zens would have to go on-site in order to sign a peti­tion. But that seems like it would have equal pro­tec­tion prob­lems, as peo­ple liv­ing near City Hall would have eas­i­er influ­ence over the gov­ern­ment than peo­ple liv­ing far­ther away.

      So for now my only solu­tion is just to refuse to sign any peti­tions for bal­lot ini­tia­tives, even if I agree with them.

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