By Lori Saldaña
It’s time to point out the obvious: San Diego is becoming a city governed not by democratic process, and not by elected officials who achieved office after being supported by the most voters. It is increasingly run by checkbook politics, flush with funds deposited by businesses intent on overriding the votes of the City Council.
Former Mayor Sanders may have left City Hall, but he learned how to take the power with him. For the past year he has been able to demonstrate this power by pushing aside Council policies on community planning and now minimum wage. He is actively supporting conservative interests that hire signature gatherers to do this dirty work in public, while he and others in the Chamber ranks raise and bundle money and write checks behind the scenes.
During my 4 years serving on the Elections Committee in the State Assembly, I learned that the petition process in California is deeply flawed. Established in 1911, intended to “reform” corrupt government practices, it has evolved into the one place where campaign financing law needs the most reform. As it stands, weak statutes and lack of oversight allow unconstitutional amendments such as Prop. 8 to be placed on the ballot and wreak havoc with people’s lives.
The lack of financial transparency in the initiative process is egregious: public disclosures of the sources of the funds paying for deceptive ads, signature gathering, and “Astroturf” social media campaigns often are not available until AFTER the signatures are collected. Only then will the public know the truth: Sanders & Co. are the true power in San Diego, not elected officials.
As for the question “Why not allow it on the ballot, then have a fair election and let citizens decide?”
It’s impossible to have a “fair” election on an initiative when it was placed on the ballot by such a flawed, unfair process. Writing a law without public input, objective research and/or community hearings, and then promoting it as something it is not, is a bit like spotting a football team 2 touchdowns, then insisting the outcome of the game is “fair” because the referees will call the game the same for both teams.
Moreover, the Chamber, California Restaurant Association and others are exploiting workers in the most callous and shameless way imaginable. They do it by wrangling members of the roaming SigGathering (SG) tribe from around the state and nation. These men and women are the itinerant migrant political workers of the initiative age. They do not live here, do not vote here, and do not work here (except to be paid per signature for several weeks).
Some are housed in hotels, owned by business interests supportive of the campaign- yet these costs are not reported as contributions. Others live in their vehicles, always ready to move on to the next signature gathering gig.
The stakes are high in this unregulated industry, where people can earn $5 and more per signature. I’ve watched a team at work at my neighborhood Vons: over the course of 1 hour on a moderately busy Saturday afternoon they gathered nearly 30 signatures- not a bad hourly wage. To earn their pay, members of the tribe will misrepresent the facts, deceive and lie to San Diegans to get their signature for a ballot measure they know little about. The irony is, if it qualifies, it will delay and quite possibly eliminate earned sick days and a tiered increase to the minimum-wage- things they don’t have, so perhaps they rationalize: why should anyone else?
Worse: Technically they are not breaking the law when they misrepresent the facts to deceive a registered voter, because there is no “law” at the state or local level against lying, cheating and stealing signatures with deception and omission. The SGs will simply say “I don’t know” when pressed for details- and they likely don’t know. They don’t live here, they don’t know the history of hours-long public hearings on the minimum wage increase, and certainly don’t know how expensive it is to live here.
They only know, and repeat, what they are told by the people who pay them: the Chamber of Commerce and CA Restaurant Association, among others, who don’t believe in the living wage, nor in putting an honest face forward in this debate.
Fortunately, hundreds of San Diegans have realized that they have been deceived and have asked for their signatures to be removed from these petitions, via the City Clerk’s office. There is even a website created by Raise Up San Diego, to help with this process: www.TheyLiedToMe.net
We believe these signatures represent the tip of the iceberg, and I’m one of many volunteers, working to educate many more voters so they realize they have been duped. RaiseUp San Diego is working to present them with their options to remove their good name from this ballot measure, so it’s not used for bad things.
Sadly, it’s been over 30 years since a genuine VOLUNTEER signature gathering effort made it onto the state ballot. No telling how long it’s been since a city initiative qualified. And how does one know if the SG is a volunteer or paid, and who is paying them? In California, there is no easy way to determine this, but in Colorado, they state:
“Any petition entity that provides compensation to a circulator to circulate a petition, must obtain a license from the Secretary of State.”
and
“If you are a circulator who will not be paid for circulating a petition concerning a ballot issue, you must display an identification badge that includes the words “VOLUNTEER CIRCULATOR” in bold-faced type that is clearly legible. If you are a circulator who will be paid for circulating a petition concerning a ballot issue, you must display an identification badge that includes the words “PAID CIRCULATOR” in bold-faced type that is clearly legible and the name and telephone number of the individual employing the circulator.”
(see http://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/Initiatives/files/PetitionCirculatorTraining.pdf)
Which leads me to this: it’s time for the City Ethics Commission and City Council to conduct hearings and begin to regulate this local industry. They can learn from states like Colorado, and also Oregon, which also has a lengthy and detailed Circulator Training manual.
This Oregon manual also governs paid circulators in ways California does not:
Registering as a Paid Circulator ORS 250.048
Any person that will be paid to gather signatures on a state initiative, referendum or recall petition must register with the Elections Division as a paid circulator.
Qualifications
Circulators are not required to be residents of Oregon, registered voters or old enough to vote.
Under Oregon election law, any person, with one exception, can register as a paid circulator.
Exception
A person does not qualify and is prohibited from applying to be a registered circulator if in the last 5 years they have been: convicted in any state for a criminal offense involving fraud, forgery or identification theft fined for a violation of the circulator registration or petition account laws
or
fined for making a false statement, oath or affidavit required under election law
Yes, Oregon gets it: people who lie to voters to get their signature don’t deserve a second chance. They are banned from doing it again, and they must register and be identified before going out and collecting signatures.
There are just under 4 million people in Oregon and 5 million in Colorado. There are 1.3 million in San Diego. Certainly, if these relatively small states can enact such protections, to protect people from being mislead, deceived and lied to, San Diegans can ask for the same.
We deserve the same level of integrity and honesty in the initiative process that is now provided to the voters north and east of us.
This first appeared at San Diego Free Press.
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