October 2, 2006
Name check | A look inside the state's signature-verification process for citizens' initiatives
By Taylor Smith
For Portland City Clerk Linda Cohen, poring over stacks of pages filled with thousands of signatures can be a head-scratching experience. Along with issuing marriage licenses and handling voter registration in Portland, Cohen's office is in charge of verifying signatures on citizens' initiative petitions. Those pages of signatures, however, are filled with loads of often unintelligible handwriting. It's Cohen's job to figure out if each sloppy tangle of letters is indeed the signature of a voter registered in her city. "It's a lot of detective work," she says. "It can get pretty tiring."
Tiring, perhaps. But Cohen acknowledges that hers is an important job. Checking signatures is critical to Maine's citizens' initiative process, which allows residents to bypass the legislative process by proposing law changes directly to the state's voters. In recent years, voters have had to decide on a number of high-profile measures ˆ from tax-cap proposals to bear-baiting rules ˆ that had their genesis in the citizens' initiative process. "It's a beautiful system," says Mary Adams, a Garland resident who's coordinated a handful of citizens' initiatives, including the high-profile Taxpayer Bill of Rights measure that is on the upcoming ballot.
But in order for a measure to make it to the state's voters, it requires signatures. Lots of signatures. Proponents of a measure are required to collect at least 50,519 signatures ˆ a number equal to 10% of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election. (That figure will change after this November's gubernatorial election, depending on voter turnout.) And for many groups, that means months of canvassing for signatures outside grocery stores and other voter-rich venues.
Citizens' initiatives receive plenty of attention during the will-they-or-won't-they period, when it's unclear whether a group has collected enough John Hancocks to place its issue on the ballot. News reports focus on the boxes of petitions delivered to the secretary of state's office ˆ the final arbiter of petition signatures ˆ or talk about why a block of signatures was rejected. Some reports use the signature verification process as a way to gauge the success or failure for any fledgling citizens' initiative measure.
But what doesn't get discussed much is the process required to verify those signatures ˆ the system's checks and balances. It's a process that involves clerks and registrars from the state's 493 municipalities. It involves state officials and all manner of tools from pens and paper to computerized voter registration systems. What's more, it's a process that, ironically, may undergo changes if proposed legislation on November's ballot passes.
Replacing books with computers
A referendum question on next month's ballot proposes amending the state's rules about citizens' initiatives and people's vetoes, aiming to set hard and fast deadlines for certain parts of the process. One of the changes calls for groups gathering signatures to turn in those signatures to local officials 10 days before the year's deadline, at which point they're delivered to the secretary of state's office for final verification. (The deadline for citizens' initiatives typically falls in late January or early February, depending on when the Legislature begins its session.)
Although existing rules require signatures to be in 10 days ahead of the deadline, a loophole ˆ which the referendum aims to close ˆ means late signatures aren't invalidated. As a result, many groups will wait until the last minute to turn in their signatures, meaning city clerks like Linda Cohen have just a few days to verify what sometimes amounts to thousands of signatures. "Clerks around the state are doing other jobs; they're running elections, registering motor vehicles ˆ all the things that municipalities have to do," she says. "And then you get a petition dropped on you that needs to be done in two days. I mean, come on. What do you do?"
Well, according to Cohen, you grin and bear it. After all, municipal clerks and registrars are the first line of defense in the hunt for bogus signatures, verifying that each name corresponds to a registered voter in their town. In larger cities like Portland, that might mean thousands of signatures per petition drive. Theresa Hamelin says that officials in smaller cities like Waterville, where she is the city's registrar, typically will check fewer than 1,000 signatures. And in small towns around Maine, that number might even drop below 100.
In each town, the method of checking signatures varies. For years, the system in Waterville, says Hamelin, was to cross reference each signature with a voter's name using a big, bound master list of residents. One person would read a name off the petition while another would look up that name on the master list. Once that name was found, the registrar would mark the person's name with a code assigned to a particular petition. "Some people had six or seven or eight letters next to their names," she says. "Now, it's all on a computer that gives a whole list of the petitions and you just click on one" that gets attached to a computerized voter record.
Portland also uses computers to make the verification job easier. Workers in the city clerk's office tag names with codes, such as "SLT" for the recent petition drive to allow slot machines in Washington County. The codes are used to ferret out duplicate signatures ˆ one of the most common causes of invalidation.
The number of signatures that clerks and registrars throw out can mean the difference between success and failure for a petition drive. Earlier this year, the Washington County Tribal Track Coalition found that nearly 13,000 of the 60,500 signatures it turned in were invalidated, meaning its bid to ask voters this year whether a racino should be allowed in Washington County failed. Of those nearly 13,000 invalidated signatures, more than 8,000 were thrown out because the signatures couldn't be verified, while nearly 2,500 were found to be duplicates. (After failing earlier this year, the group in August announced it was confident it had enough signatures to put the measure on next year's ballot.)
Playing petition bingo
However, not every town can commit the resources to vetting signatures as thoroughly as Cohen's office can. "There are a lot of towns that are too big to do it manually but also can't do it electronically," says Deputy Secretary of State Julie Flynn, who oversees the
Bureau of Corporations, Elections and Commissions.
So those signatures get sent to the secretary of state's office, and Flynn and others in the elections division will go through many of the submitted petitions looking for problems like duplicate signatures. "We have a very manual way to do it on the state level," says Flynn. "We call it petition bingo ˆ people sit around the table calling out names, checking for duplicates."
Flynn says the days of petition bingo are numbered because the state is close to unveiling a central voter registration database that will allow municipalities to cross-check voters, even if those voters moved to a different town. Flynn says the system, which she expects to be in place early next year, will lend more efficiency to the signature verification process. "If someone moves to another town, it won't be a new registration," she says. "It'll just be a change of address."
Cohen says that on average 10%-15% of the signatures on petitions coming through the Portland city clerk's office are invalidated for one reason or another, from duplications to illegibility to fraud. And while fraud isn't typically a big problem, it is something that happens in the citizens' initiative process. In fact, Carol Palesky, who in August was sentenced to 16 months in prison for embezzling money from a client of her accounting practice, was convicted in 1997 for falsifying dates on some petitions in order to keep the signatures valid. (Signatures currently are valid for only one year under Maine's citizens' initiative regulations.) "Some people had died that had signed the petition," says Flynn.
Allegations of fraud also have cropped up when petition organizers hire signature gatherers rather than relying solely on volunteers. Those workers typically are paid as much as a dollar or two per signature, and some worry that financial compensation means the petition circulators are less careful when it comes to vetting potential signers. "We believed it was an enticement for some people to add people's names or signatures," says Flynn.
While most groups prefer to have volunteers collecting signatures, some organizers also say that having the option to hire people to circulate petitions is an important right. TABOR organizer Mary Adams says 200-300 volunteers collected more than 45,000 signatures last year ˆ just a shade below the 50,519 limit. And though Adams says she believes it's "more in the spirit of a referendum" if volunteers are the ones collecting signatures, she believes TABOR wouldn't be on this year's ballot but for the group she hired to collect signatures. "I really needed the buffer," she says. "It's not really my style, but I was willing to pay for some signatures."
Still, Adams maintains that although some signature gathering can be farmed out to for-hire groups, a group's bread and butter is its volunteers. And because of that, training the volunteers is an important part of her job. "What you do is lay out all the rules in black and white that they have to follow," she says.
That kind of training pleases Cohen, who praises groups that take the time to impart the rules of good signature gathering to their volunteers. "The organized ones really have it down," she says. "They know exactly what they're doing."
Tiring, perhaps. But Cohen acknowledges that hers is an important job. Checking signatures is critical to Maine's citizens' initiative process, which allows residents to bypass the legislative process by proposing law changes directly to the state's voters. In recent years, voters have had to decide on a number of high-profile measures ˆ from tax-cap proposals to bear-baiting rules ˆ that had their genesis in the citizens' initiative process. "It's a beautiful system," says Mary Adams, a Garland resident who's coordinated a handful of citizens' initiatives, including the high-profile Taxpayer Bill of Rights measure that is on the upcoming ballot.
But in order for a measure to make it to the state's voters, it requires signatures. Lots of signatures. Proponents of a measure are required to collect at least 50,519 signatures ˆ a number equal to 10% of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election. (That figure will change after this November's gubernatorial election, depending on voter turnout.) And for many groups, that means months of canvassing for signatures outside grocery stores and other voter-rich venues.
Citizens' initiatives receive plenty of attention during the will-they-or-won't-they period, when it's unclear whether a group has collected enough John Hancocks to place its issue on the ballot. News reports focus on the boxes of petitions delivered to the secretary of state's office ˆ the final arbiter of petition signatures ˆ or talk about why a block of signatures was rejected. Some reports use the signature verification process as a way to gauge the success or failure for any fledgling citizens' initiative measure.
But what doesn't get discussed much is the process required to verify those signatures ˆ the system's checks and balances. It's a process that involves clerks and registrars from the state's 493 municipalities. It involves state officials and all manner of tools from pens and paper to computerized voter registration systems. What's more, it's a process that, ironically, may undergo changes if proposed legislation on November's ballot passes.
Replacing books with computers
A referendum question on next month's ballot proposes amending the state's rules about citizens' initiatives and people's vetoes, aiming to set hard and fast deadlines for certain parts of the process. One of the changes calls for groups gathering signatures to turn in those signatures to local officials 10 days before the year's deadline, at which point they're delivered to the secretary of state's office for final verification. (The deadline for citizens' initiatives typically falls in late January or early February, depending on when the Legislature begins its session.)
Although existing rules require signatures to be in 10 days ahead of the deadline, a loophole ˆ which the referendum aims to close ˆ means late signatures aren't invalidated. As a result, many groups will wait until the last minute to turn in their signatures, meaning city clerks like Linda Cohen have just a few days to verify what sometimes amounts to thousands of signatures. "Clerks around the state are doing other jobs; they're running elections, registering motor vehicles ˆ all the things that municipalities have to do," she says. "And then you get a petition dropped on you that needs to be done in two days. I mean, come on. What do you do?"
Well, according to Cohen, you grin and bear it. After all, municipal clerks and registrars are the first line of defense in the hunt for bogus signatures, verifying that each name corresponds to a registered voter in their town. In larger cities like Portland, that might mean thousands of signatures per petition drive. Theresa Hamelin says that officials in smaller cities like Waterville, where she is the city's registrar, typically will check fewer than 1,000 signatures. And in small towns around Maine, that number might even drop below 100.
In each town, the method of checking signatures varies. For years, the system in Waterville, says Hamelin, was to cross reference each signature with a voter's name using a big, bound master list of residents. One person would read a name off the petition while another would look up that name on the master list. Once that name was found, the registrar would mark the person's name with a code assigned to a particular petition. "Some people had six or seven or eight letters next to their names," she says. "Now, it's all on a computer that gives a whole list of the petitions and you just click on one" that gets attached to a computerized voter record.
Portland also uses computers to make the verification job easier. Workers in the city clerk's office tag names with codes, such as "SLT" for the recent petition drive to allow slot machines in Washington County. The codes are used to ferret out duplicate signatures ˆ one of the most common causes of invalidation.
The number of signatures that clerks and registrars throw out can mean the difference between success and failure for a petition drive. Earlier this year, the Washington County Tribal Track Coalition found that nearly 13,000 of the 60,500 signatures it turned in were invalidated, meaning its bid to ask voters this year whether a racino should be allowed in Washington County failed. Of those nearly 13,000 invalidated signatures, more than 8,000 were thrown out because the signatures couldn't be verified, while nearly 2,500 were found to be duplicates. (After failing earlier this year, the group in August announced it was confident it had enough signatures to put the measure on next year's ballot.)
Playing petition bingo
However, not every town can commit the resources to vetting signatures as thoroughly as Cohen's office can. "There are a lot of towns that are too big to do it manually but also can't do it electronically," says Deputy Secretary of State Julie Flynn, who oversees the
Bureau of Corporations, Elections and Commissions.
So those signatures get sent to the secretary of state's office, and Flynn and others in the elections division will go through many of the submitted petitions looking for problems like duplicate signatures. "We have a very manual way to do it on the state level," says Flynn. "We call it petition bingo ˆ people sit around the table calling out names, checking for duplicates."
Flynn says the days of petition bingo are numbered because the state is close to unveiling a central voter registration database that will allow municipalities to cross-check voters, even if those voters moved to a different town. Flynn says the system, which she expects to be in place early next year, will lend more efficiency to the signature verification process. "If someone moves to another town, it won't be a new registration," she says. "It'll just be a change of address."
Cohen says that on average 10%-15% of the signatures on petitions coming through the Portland city clerk's office are invalidated for one reason or another, from duplications to illegibility to fraud. And while fraud isn't typically a big problem, it is something that happens in the citizens' initiative process. In fact, Carol Palesky, who in August was sentenced to 16 months in prison for embezzling money from a client of her accounting practice, was convicted in 1997 for falsifying dates on some petitions in order to keep the signatures valid. (Signatures currently are valid for only one year under Maine's citizens' initiative regulations.) "Some people had died that had signed the petition," says Flynn.
Allegations of fraud also have cropped up when petition organizers hire signature gatherers rather than relying solely on volunteers. Those workers typically are paid as much as a dollar or two per signature, and some worry that financial compensation means the petition circulators are less careful when it comes to vetting potential signers. "We believed it was an enticement for some people to add people's names or signatures," says Flynn.
While most groups prefer to have volunteers collecting signatures, some organizers also say that having the option to hire people to circulate petitions is an important right. TABOR organizer Mary Adams says 200-300 volunteers collected more than 45,000 signatures last year ˆ just a shade below the 50,519 limit. And though Adams says she believes it's "more in the spirit of a referendum" if volunteers are the ones collecting signatures, she believes TABOR wouldn't be on this year's ballot but for the group she hired to collect signatures. "I really needed the buffer," she says. "It's not really my style, but I was willing to pay for some signatures."
Still, Adams maintains that although some signature gathering can be farmed out to for-hire groups, a group's bread and butter is its volunteers. And because of that, training the volunteers is an important part of her job. "What you do is lay out all the rules in black and white that they have to follow," she says.
That kind of training pleases Cohen, who praises groups that take the time to impart the rules of good signature gathering to their volunteers. "The organized ones really have it down," she says. "They know exactly what they're doing."
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