Simplify Nominating Petition Requirements: 1,000 Signatures for Statewide Office, Proportional Quotas for Smaller Jurisdictions

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.