Legislative Hearing on HB2082 to Assault Petition Rights

HB 2082 will be heard Wednesday morning in the House Elections, Ethics & Rules Committee at 8:30AM. The Bill aims to

– Ban helping people with their signature information: For people who forget to list their zip code or other minor information, it would now be illegal to help the signer fill it in. For senior citizens and people with hard to understand hand-writing, it would be against the law for a petition circulator to honor their address by writing it in more clearly so the senior citizen’s name wouldn’t be disqualified. It is almost as if the politician’s WANT people’s names to be disqualified.

– Ban copying blank petitions: So much for grassroots Democracy when government wants to ban the copying of blank petition sheets. This bill mandates petition sheets to have a unique sequential ID# for state tracking purposes. This bills aims to slow down the ability to circulate popular measures when neighbors copy and pass petitions to their neighbors. It is nothing less than a blatant attempt to thwart people from using petitions.

– Mandatory government approval for paid signature gatherers. By creating and controlling when and where training will happen, the Secretary of State now can control when and where paid circulators can start working. Let’s apply this unnecessary and overreaching rule to all candidates and campaign staff, so that the Secretary of State can control when and where anyone can run for office to make sure they are government certified.

This bill and others are such a blatant power grab and violation of the people’s initiative process, it will definitely create one of the largest political coalitions in rebuking such measures with a statewide initiative (see Kevin Mannix’s petition). We may be on the verge of history folks.

If you are outraged at HB 2082, please contact Jason Williams at 503-603-9009