Spin Control: How much protection, if any, should signature-gatherers get?

As often happens when the Legislature is in session, a hearing last week posed a question that probably no one has thought to ask.

Should a person who is paid to gather signatures for a ballot measure have more legal protections in state law than a woman seeking an abortion in a medical facility?

The answer is “to be determined.”

The question may sound like apples and oranges, but the two topics aren’t as far apart as one may think.

The right to an abortion in Washington is decades old, predating the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling by several years. The right to take lawmaking into the citizens’ hands is even older, dating to the first decade of the last century.

In fact, that early right to an abortion owes its existence to a cousin of the initiative, a referendum bill, which the 1970 Legislature put on the ballot because it didn’t quite have the nerve to pass the law on its own. Lawmakers kicked it to voters, who soundly approved it.

Voters don’t always get a chance to make law at the ballot box. But this year, they’re likely to weigh in on a record number of initiatives that were circulated in the last half of 2023 and sent to this year’s Legislature with so many signatures that they are breezing through the certification process.

That would be by far the most initiatives to the Legislature sent to a single year’s ballot in state history. Seven initiatives to the voters were put on the ballot in 1914 when the process was new; since then, the record for voter initiatives has been six, in both 2000 and 2010.

The gathering of signatures this year relied heavily on paying the people who collected them, as well as a record payout of more than $6 million in “bounties” for signatures. There were also reports by the gatherers of harassment by opponents of the proposals.

Those harassment complaints prompted a bill in each chamber to set up a “buffer zone” of 25 feet around a signature-gathering location.

It’s the same distance for the zone around a ballot drop box that keeps people from campaigning or trying to influence voters seeking to deposit their ballot.

Wait a minute, Sen. Patty Kuderer, D-Bellevue, said as the Senate State Government and Elections Committee staff was explaining the bill. That kind of protection is not provided to women seeking an abortion at a clinic with protesters outside.

“I find it odd we would protect paid signature-gatherers over people trying to access reproductive health care,” said Kuderer, but added that might be a discussion “for another day.”

But it wasn’t. Not all signature gatherers are paid, Sen. Phil Fortunato, R-Auburn, replied, adding that signature-gathering should be protected as part of the elections process while abortion clinic protests fall under free speech protections.

And 25-foot barriers are common for things like gun shows, he said.

But the bill is proposing a “floating buffer zone” Kuderer said, because it covers the signature-gatherer, who may be moving around. She asked committee staff if those are even constitutional.

Both the U.S. Supreme Court and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have said they can be overly burdensome, she was told.

People with leaflets opposing an initiative might also have a right to have their say in elections, Sen. Bob Hasegawa, D-Seattle, said. He could see protecting volunteer signature-gatherers, but maybe not the ones who collecting cash.

“They are taking on a job to do something and getting paid to do that,” Hasegawa said, adding that the initiative process has become a prime example of “the influence of money buying elections.”

Sen. Jeff Wilson, R-Longview, the bill’s prime sponsor, said it was a response to reports of attempts to disrupt what he called “a very democratic process we must preserve.” The Legislature should step in to preserve that process, he said.

“You don’t have to sign a petition. Let that conversation, both pro and con, speak freely,” Wilson said. As for the distinction between signature-gatherers who volunteer or are paid, he said didn’t know whether the people who were disrupting the signature gathering were being paid.

“I’m trying to preach civility and respect for a process … in order to hear both sides,” he said.

A similar bill was heard a week earlier in a House committee, but like Wilson’s bill it is not scheduled for a committee vote that could move it forward to the full chamber.