Carla Howell and Michael Cloud
Alliance to Roll Back Taxes
Small Government News
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
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Just Do the Signature Drive With Volunteers?”
Virtually every statewide political campaign in Massachusetts hires petitioners to collect signatures.
Senator Kennedy, Senator Kerry, Governor Deval Patrick, former Governor Romney, former Governor Cellucci, and the rest paid for signatures. For at least the last 40 years.
Why?
Because the petitioning requirements have been made so hard, the time for petitioning so short, the ability of opponents to block petitioning, and the ease of removing valid voters signatures from the ballot.
But it gets worse. Massachusetts requires 6-1/2 times as many signatures for Ballot Initiatives as they do for U.S. Senate and Governor candidates – and they give us 1/3 less time to collect them.
We have to collect over 96,000 signatures in 49 days. In the fall, when rainstorms or snowstorms can and do prevent petitioning for 1 day or 3 or 7 days — or more. Cutting petition time by 10% or 20%.
We have to print 351 DIFFERENT petitions for our initiative — one for each town and city in Massachusetts.
Our petitioners have to carry dozens of DIFFERENT petitions at each petitioning location – a mall, a store, etc – to make sure that we have the right petition for that voter.
If a voter mistakenly signs the Natick petition, while living in Framingham, his signature is disqualified.
If a signer or petitioner accidentally makes a “stray mark on a petition”, every one of the valid 12 or 15 voter signatures on that petition are disqualified.
Then we need to sort and separate the petitions into the 351 towns and cities, pre-validate 10% to 20% of the signatures, deliver them to 351 different town clerks all across Massachusetts – many town clerks offices are only open part time; if you can’t show up them…too bad for you. The town clerks physically check each petition signature against the each voter’s signature. Many are conscientious. Some are sloppy and disqualify valid signatures.
Next, we have a 7-day window to collect 351 petitions from the 351 towns — when clerks’ offices are open.
Then, if the town clerks have validated enough signatures to move us toward the ballot, we have to deliver the signatures to the Secretary of State’s Office — where the signatures are tallied.
While this is going on, the Teachers Unions and Government Employees Unions can challenge any or all of the validated signatures for any of a dozen different legal reasons.
This is why virtually all statewide political campaigns and ballot initiatives hire paid petitioners. So they can get on the ballot.
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In the Pepuls Republik of Taxachusetts, there is a band of crazies that are trying to repeal the tax law.
(Regardless of where you live, if they succeed, it will help everyone. You may want to consider sending them a few bucks. Would you have sent money for munitions to the Militiamen at Lexington or Concord? Repealing the sales tax in MA would be modern day equivalent of “the shot heard round the world”! https://www.fbs.net/csg/RBTdonate.html)
It interesting to see how the political elite have insulated them selves from the peons. Why bother have petitions at all? You can’t practically impact the politicians.
Argh!
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Posted by reinkefj 
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