Mark reads my post on the Secretary of State’s Proposal #14, changing the basis for calcualting signature requirements for candidate petitions, asks me what I would recommend as the “fairest” system for candidate petitions. My response turns into a whole blog post of its own:
Mark, the ideal process for getting on the ballot involves the two principles Donald mentions: uniform requirements for everybody, with no regard to party affiliation. Whatever the number of signatures we require, the number shouldn’t vary based on which party you associate with. And any citizen should be able to sign for any candidate, not just candidates of their own party. If you’re a Republican but you think everyone seeking the GOP nomination for governor is a doofus (and I’d say so far that number is 3 out of 4), you should be able to sign a petition for a better Libertarian or Democrat or independent.
In figuring rules for elections, I like to look to Robert’s Rules of Order for parallels. I think of petitions as motions and the signatures as “seconds”. Robert’s Rules don’t require a second for nominations, so a strict mirroring of parliamentary procedure would say we don’t need to collect signatures to put someone on the ballot. But in a parliamentary meeting, we’re all in one room, we all hear each nomination, and we all have a chance to object or nominate other candidates before the chair closes nominations. Among the general electorate, I’m o.k. with using signature collection as a way to alert the public that a candidate is running and to allow citizens to recruit challengers. I’ll also accede to case law that says petition signature requirements serve a reasonable state interest in “requiring some preliminary showing of a significant modicum of support before printing the name of a political organization’s candidate on the ballot.”
Signature collection helpfully tests candidates. Before they get on the ballot, they have to talk to their neighbors and persuade them to sign. They get some practice knocking on doors, answering questions, and dealing with rejection. They get to see whether they really like basic campaigning and public accountability. And we all get to see whether the candidate can follow some basic laws—identify registered voters, meet the signature threshold, submit by the deadline—and respect the process. As I said of Annette Bosworth’s sham campaign in 2014, if a candidate can’t respect the sanctity of oath on her petition, we can’t expect her to to respect her oath of office if elected.
So how many signatures should we require on a nominating petition?
I’m o.k. with requiring a percentage of voters in the jurisdiction for signatures rather than the same flat number for all offices. If the idea is that petitioning lets people know so-and-so is running, then a larger community—state rather than county, Sioux Falls city commission rather than Lake Herman Sanitary District—requires contacting more people to get the word out.
I don’t know what the ideal percentage would be. Maybe I’d peg it to a statewide standard of 1,000. A thousand is a lot of people to talk to, and practically, if I have to get 1,000 signatures, I’m going to end up talking to at least 2,000, since I’ll get many nos and I’ll meet many people who aren’t registered to vote.
So how about this formula: we set 1,000 signatures as the threshold for running for statewide office. Then at the start of each election season, we divide 1,000 by the number of registered voters—622,133 on this fine first Tuesday of December—and get the signature quota for all races— based on current registration, 0.16%. That’s the percentage of registered voters you have to get to sign your petition for any office this season:
If you’re running for Minnehaha County Commission, 137796 voters, so you need 222 voters to sign your petition.
If you’re running for Lake County Commission, 7,723 voters, so 23 petition signatures.
And in Jones County, the county with the smallest number of registered voters, 645, 0.16% is 1.04, which we round up (there are no fractional voters, so always round up) to 2 signatures.
If Legislative districts are drawn fairly, they should all have about 17,800 voters (your mileage will vary), so candidates for legislature should have to collect around 29 signatures.
We check the voter rolls and set the signature quota the day before petitioning starts. But we know it’s always 1,000 for statewide office, with a proportional quota for every smaller jurisdiction.
That’s the simplest, fairest system I can come up with this morning. I invite your amendments and alternative proposals for the sake of fair and rational ballot access.
I really like the rational for requiring candidates to collect signatures. I’m not sure everyone would follow that route. Candidates who could afford to hire people to collect signatures probably wouldn’t.
Your system is easily better than what exists and would be easier to conduct for the state too. Bravo, I’m not even finished with my coffee yet.
Anything that simplifies the system is good. I’m not as concerned with being fair to small counties as you are. Two signatures is ridiculous. Many candidates could get that from their spouse and their 18-year old high school senior. The minimum signature should be ten. I’d put the maximum for largest county at 200, and appropriate fairly for the other counties.
Registered voter lists are controversial. You have many Democrats registering or re-registering as Republicans just to vote in primaries. For another you have the issue of voter list purges, which are controversial for many reasons. If you don’t purge you get a list with a lot of people who have moved away. If you do purge, there are issues about whether the purge was fair to all residents. All this was discussed extensively during a legislative session in the 1990s, and the total of the vote for Governor seemed to be the fairest and highest estimate of active voters in statewide elections, legislative and ballot measures. It also was a high estimate for active voters in local elections.
For statewide offices I like the idea of the candidate having to obtain signatures from people all across the state. That gets the candidate out there talking with people all across the state. I’d say the candidate should have to gather at least 5 signatures from at least 63 of the 66 counties. 1,000 signatures total sounds good.
Scott, I think most serious statewide candidates understand they have to run statewide and appeal to all sorts of voters. But petitioning is not the campaign. It the very start of the campaign. Mandating any county petitioning numbers overly complicated the process, of checking the petition. It invites all sorts of lawsuits. tt will limit the candidates to those who have the money to buy petitioners or those who already have a statewide profile before the campaign begins. You would never have gotten a Nils Boe, an Archie Gubbrud, a Richard Kneip, a George Mickelson, or a Mike Rounds with that type of system.. It’s usually is the case that most candidates have a geographic base in their home counties, and they will collect most of their signatures there. After the petitioning they will have to broaden their appeal statewide to have a chance at winning. That’s what campaigns are for.
Donald, I’m open to minimum signature requirements, but I remind you that Robert didn’t think even two “signatures” were necessary to put someone on a ballot. With some small counties or special districts, we get down to an electorate of a few hundred, maybe just several, numbers where Robert’s Rules could easily and practically apply.
Scott, I get queasy about geographical quotas. Too often they are used as a way to limit ballot access rather than to promote more involvement. Geographical quotas can run into constitutional trouble by diluting the principle of “one person, one vote” by giving one district the ability to stop a candidate who is popular in a dozen other districts from appearing on the ballot.
And as Donald says, petitions aren’t elections. Everyone will get their say on candidates at the election, and every serious statewide candidate will make an effort throughout the campaign to go talk to as many of those voters as the candidate can reach.
Nominations come from the people we know best; the campaign gives the candidate and those acquaintances the chance to make their case for the candidate’s merits to everyone else in the community.