PETITION BACKERS PONY UP

Signatures Draw Buck Apiece For Gatherers

For months, Al Anders has been standing in front of post offices with
a clipboard, hitting up passers-by for their signatures. He'd start
with his petition to legalize marijuana in Alaska. If he sold you on
that, he'd often pull out another petition, to lower property taxes or
to put the Constitution Party on the national ballot or to start a new
system for electing candidates. He is paid to collect signatures,
usually a $1 for each one. It's honest work, he says.

"There's nothing disgraceful about getting paid to get signatures," he
said. To get an issue on the Alaska ballot by petition, paid signature
gathering has become the norm. In 1998, four of the five initiatives
on the state ballot employed paid circulators. And each of the three
petitions submitted for the 2000 ballot - capping property taxes,
legalizing marijuana, raising the minimum wage - paid people to
collect at least some of the signatures, according to the Division of
Elections.

How much they paid or where they got the money isn't a matter of
public record in Alaska, but state law says no collector can be paid
more than $1 a signature.

It's "virtually impossible" to collect the nearly 23,000 signatures
needed to get on the ballot using only volunteers, said Kevin Harun,
who backed a 1998 anti-billboard initiative when he directed Alaska
Center for the Environment

Anchorage lawyer Ken Jacobus, an active Republican who sponsored an
initiative two years ago and is working on another this year, agreed.

"You have to have a number of people who are willing to work for a
year or a year and a half and devoting their lives to it," he said.

Or if you have the money, you could simply hire an outfit like
National Voter Outreach in Carson City, Nev.

THE PROFESSIONALS

National Voter Outreach does it all: printing the petitions, hiring
the signature gatherers, completing the paperwork.

"They deliver a finished product," Jacobus said.

Two years ago, when Jacobus was working on an initiative to make
English Alaska's official language, his group hired the Nevada firm.

"I really never saw the petitions until they were delivered, all
signed," Jacobus said. "They're real professionals."

The for-profit company is part of an "initiative industry" operating
nationwide, said Elisabeth Gerber, a political science professor at
the University of California San Diego. For a price, these companies
can get all the signatures you need to put your issue before voters.

"In California, if you have $1 million, you're virtually assured a
place on the ballot," she said.

In Alaska, it takes fewer signatures to qualify, so it's much
cheaper.

Rick Arnold, one of the founders of National Voter Outreach, said his
company worked on several Alaska initiatives when it was here for the
1997-98 election season.

Typically, the company sends a subcontractor to the state to manage
the effort. The subcontractor places ads and hires locals to collect
the signatures. The rates vary, but in its last Alaska effort, the
company's bid price was about $1.56 per signature, Arnold said.

If you figure that most groups like to reach about 40,000 signatures
before they submit their petitions, that would come to about $62,000.

Arnold said he doesn't necessarily support the measures his company
works on, but he believes in the initiative process. It's a safety
valve that allows people to circumvent their elected officials to make
the laws they want. Money doesn't change that, he said.

"Certainly politics today is money," he said. "It's money no matter
what kind of politics it is or how you do it. ... Sure, it means that
Bill Gates can get almost anything he wants on the ballot in
Washington state. But is that wrong?"

Money doesn't guarantee voters will adopt it, he said.

Professor Gerber's research backs him up. She studied 168 initiative
campaigns in eight states.

"In all of those states, it's not the big-money measures that tend to
pass," she said. "In fact, the more money that is spent, the less
likely it is to pass."

How much money was spent to get initiatives on the 2000 ballot isn't
clear since Alaska law doesn't require petition campaigns to disclose
the information.

Uwe Kalenka, the prime sponsor of the initiative to cap local property
taxes at 10 mills, has said he used paid circulators at the beginning
but then found he didn't need them. A co-sponsor, Scott Kohlhaas,
estimated that about 25 percent of the 40,000 signatures gathered for
that petition came from paid circulators.

The measure to legalize marijuana got a sizable contribution from
California-based hemp crusader Jack Herer, organizers said.

The initiative to raise the minimum wage has union backing. Its
circulators were paid by the AFL-CIO, according to the petitions they
submitted to the Division of Elections.

VOLUNTEERS

Jim Crary, a former city prosecutor, is trying to increase the state
tax on alcohol. He was aiming to get the initiative on the 2000 ballot
but didn't have enough signatures by the deadline this month. He's now
aiming for the 2002 ballot.

At first, an all-volunteer effort seemed to be the best way to go, he
said.

"It gets more people involved, people who are committed," he said. But
having come up short despite some 200 volunteers, Crary said hiring
signature collectors doesn't seem like a bad idea.

"I'd consider it," he said. "I'd definitely consider
it."

The true cost of hiring people to carry a petition is in credibility,
said Doug Pope, sponsor of a land-and-shoot wolf ban in 1996 and of
the anti-billboard initiative of 1998.

"Money can buy signatures. No doubt about it," Pope said. "It's a
question of whether you want it."

Once you get to the ballot, your measure has to seem legitimate to
voters, he said. And even if you get it passed, it has to have
credibility with lawmakers and government agencies. Otherwise, Pope
said, they'll ignore it, weaken it or repeal it was soon as they can.

But even a volunteer effort costs money, Pope said.

"I don't think you necessarily have to buy the signatures, but if you
don't, you certainly have to pay the volunteer coordinator," he said.

A competent coordinator, a popular issue and a lot of volunteers can
get the job done in about six months, he figures.

"Realistically, you probably need $15,000 or $20,000 to run a
volunteer organization," he said.

The only initiative to qualify for the 1998 ballot without paying
circulators, the billboard ban, had the benefit of Michelle Keck, an
organizer who was paid by Alaska Center for the Environment.

THE HYBRIDS

Jacobus is working on an initiative that would allow voters to rank
candidates and provide for an instant runoff if none won a majority.
He doesn't have the kind of money for this effort that he did two
years ago for the official English initiative.

"That was a Rolls Royce operation. This is more of a Volkswagon," said
Fritz Pettyjohn, a former legislator who is working with Jacobus on
the "preferential voting" measure.

Even if the group had more money, it may not have been able to hire a
professional Outside firm. Arnold, of National Voter Outreach, said he
didn't bid on Alaska work this election season because of a new state
law that says petition circulators can't be paid more than $1 per
signature. He figures it would cost more than that to hire good
circulators.

Instead, several groups trying to get their measures on the 2000
ballot paid people like Al Anders.

Anders has circulated petitions all over the country for money, but
he's no mercenary. He wouldn't carry a petition he doesn't believe in,
he said.

"I wouldn't carry the wolf-snaring petition or billboards. ... I
wouldn't carry the minimum wage petition, but I would have hired
people for them," he said.

A committed Libertarian and an Anchorage resident for the past three
years, Anders is devoted to legalizing hemp.

"I have no life outside of fighting the drug war," he
said.

He figures he collected 3,000 to 4,000 signatures for the property tax
relief group, a few thousand for the majority vote group and more than
10,000 for the measure to legalize marijuana.

Some circulators offer their variety of petitions "buffet style,"
letting passers-by choose their favorite clipboards. But Anders opted
for the zealot's approach: "If you didn't sign my 'legalize hemp'
initiative, I wouldn't let you sign anything else," he said.

* Reporter Liz Ruskin can be reached at 257-4591 or lruskin@adn.com