Turning Tea Party Patriots into Political Petitioners

As Americans rise up all across the country to challenge a political elite that many believe does not listen to them, it is important to consider the tools that people in many states have employed to directly affect change: the petition.

In Missouri, our Constitution includes the following passage:

The people reserve power to propose and enact or reject laws and amendments to the constitution by the initiative, independent of the general assembly, and also reserve power to approve or reject by referendum any act of the general assembly, except as hereinafter provided. (Article 3, Section 49)

The document clearly states that the people possess the right to initiate laws and constitutional amendments, even though they grant those same powers to their representatives in the legislature. This is an important since it permits the people to enact laws directly and without going through the standard legislative process.

Unfortunately, in Missouri and other states where the people enjoy this right, the initiative process is continually under assault from state legislatures–Republican and Democrat alike–even to the point of adopting unconstitutional limitations to them. Such efforts have included the following:

• A 1969 law in Oklahoma required that petition circulators be state residents. In December 2008, the Tenth Circuit Court unanimously struck down that law as unconstitutional. The Court did the same to a similar law in Colorado in 2002.

• A 2005 law in Ohio that restricted petition gatherers from being paid per signature was struck down by the Sixth Circuit Court struck in March 2008. Ohio appealed the decision but the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear it. Similar pay-per-signature regulations have been overruled by federal district courts in Idaho, Maine, Mississippi and Washington.

• A Colorado law that required petitioners to wear badges with their name and whether they were a volunteer or paid circulator was struck down as unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1999.

A common argument for limiting the petition process is that it puts too much money into politics or that it invites fraud. Yet courts have found this not to be the case. In the 2005 ruling against Ohio, the Court concluded that prohibiting payment per signature would increase the costs and the time necessary to obtain the required signatures. The Court also rejected the evidence that this particular form of payment resulted in fraud.

Other legislators worry that petition drives can be funded and operated by people living out-of-state. In a December interview with the Springfield News-Leader, Rep. Michael Parson (R-133) said, “What’s happening is a company or a special-interest group can come in from out of the state, basically unload the signature gathers (from a bus), do a marketing campaign and change the Constitution of the State of Missouri.” It is important to note that Parson’s concern about out-of-state money and campaign workers doesn’t extend to candidate elections, like his own. His legislative efforts would only regulate out of state activity on campaigns for ballot initiatives, not campaigns for politicians.

Organizations such as Citizens in Charge are dedicated to preserving petition rights and even expanding them into new states. This is the first place tea party organizers should turn when considering how to leverage their clout. Ballotpedia.org is a website offering information about various ballot initiatives in Missouri and elsewhere. This service is important, because often the keys to the petition process are held by the executive and legislative branches–the very groups that the petition process is intended to circumvent. Even if a petition makes it to the ballot, the language that appears on the ballot may be written to opponents to change.

The Missouri general assembly recently debated real and substantive improvements to the initiative process, but the legislation did not survive the frenzied final few hours of the session. Look for these efforts to continue in January, and to remain a battleground all over the country.