☆ Could print-at-home petitions make it cheaper for SV voters to qualify a state ballot measure? (3/3)
Getting a proposition to qualify for the ballot doesn’t have to be prohibitively expensive, says HJTA VP Susan Shelley in an Opp Now exclusive Q&A. A recent campaign proved the concept, she says, that it only costs about a dollar per signature to circulate if you let voters print out their own petitions.
Opportunity Now: You seem confident that the Local Taxpayer Protection Act to Save Proposition 13 will win if it gets on the ballot. What makes you think you’ll be able to get the million-or-so signatures required?
Susan Shelley: When we created a one-page, print-at-home petition to try to repeal the death tax provision in Prop 19, we were able to collect about half a million signatures on a very limited budget with advertising, outreach, and volunteers who were very motivated.
ON: But that wasn’t enough. And you’ll need twice that number this time.
SS: If we could do five times the advertising that we did in that campaign, we would collect five times as many signatures, which is more than enough.
ON: Isn’t it incredibly expensive to collect signatures?
SS: With the repeal-the-death-tax proposition, the cost was about one dollar per signature.
ON: So those people holding clipboards in grocery store parking lots, don’t they get paid at least a dollar per signature?
SS: I think on the street now it’s $10 or $15 per signature.
ON: Wow. That’s just what they’re getting paid, not counting the other costs of running a signature collecting campaign?
SS: The old model is much more expensive, if it works at all.
ON: How do you do it so cheaply?
SS: It’s a one-page petition that people can download, print and mail in.
ON: You mean people can get the petition online?
SS: Yes. They can go to SaveProp13.com and click ‘Sign the Petition Now.’ That will open a pdf file on their computer that includes the official petition, easy instructions, even a mailing label to tape to an envelope.
Signatures only count if they are in ink, on paper, on an official petition. Electronic or online signatures are not valid. But a petition can be distributed online and then printed on paper. That’s completely legal and valid.
So, what we're doing is distributing a downloadable petition that people can print and sign at home, then mail to us. There’s no limit on how many California voters can do this at the same time.
ON: This seems simple but also innovative.
SS: This is a campaign that spends $2 million, not $20 million, on saturation advertising that runs from early September to mid-February. With $2 million in advertising, we could accomplish what the old system required $20 million to do.
ON: And the core message is protecting Prop 13?
SS: Yes. The recurring argument we’ve had since 1978 is whether it will or will not be easier to raise your taxes. Proposition 13 said it’s going to be harder to raise your taxes. And there's been a fight in the courts and in the legislature and on the ballot ever since.
This is an extension of that battle. We're saying, ‘No, it should not be easier to raise your taxes,’ and we have to save Proposition 13.
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