BILL ANALYSIS Ó
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Kevin de León, Chair
AB 1117 (Donnelly) - Initiative Petitions
Amended: June 24, 2013 Policy Vote: E&CA 4-1
Urgency: No Mandate: No
Hearing Date: August 30, 2013
Consultant: Maureen Ortiz
SUSPENSE FILE.
Bill Summary: AB 1117 allows proponents of an initiative or
referendum to email the petition to the Secretary of State
(SOS), and require the SOS to make the initiative available to
the public for downloading and printing from the SOS's Internet
Web site.
Fiscal Impact:
Minor costs of about $5,000 annually for SOS to create the
email address and to maintain the hyperlinks to initiatives
(General)
Annual costs of $59,000 for SOS to review petitions for
accuracy and to convert petitions into a downloadable format
(General)
Potentially significant investigative costs to SOS
(General)
The Secretary of State indicates potentially $104,018 the first
year, and $99,018 annually in increased investigation costs due
to an increase in the number of reports of petition fraud to the
SOS Election Fraud Investigations Unit.
Background: Existing law requires the Secretary of State to
prepare and provide to any person upon request, a pamphlet
describing the procedures and requirements for preparing and
circulating a statewide initiative measure and for filing
sections of the petition, and describing the procedure used in
determining and verifying the number of qualified voters who
have signed the petition.
Existing law contains many requirements that circulators must
follow. Some of those requirements and prohibitions are the
following:
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Only persons who are registered, qualified voters at
the time of signing are entitled to sign the petition.
The circulator must not misrepresent the purpose or
contents of the petition to potential signers.
The circulator must not make a false statement in
response to a voter's inquiry as to whether the circulator
is paid or is a volunteer signature gatherer.
The circulator must not refuse to allow the voter to
read the initiative measure or petition or the Attorney
General's summary.
The circulator must not pay or give something of
value in exchange for a signature on an initiative measure.
Circulators are subject to criminal penalties for
making false affidavits, or signing or soliciting to sign
false, forged, fictitious, or ineligible signatures and
names.
Circulators may not circulate a petition within 100
feet of a polling place or an elections official's office
on election day.
Proposed Law: AB 1117 requires the Secretary of State to
provide an electronic mail address at which the proponent of an
initiative or referendum may submit to the SOS a copy of the
petition for the proposed measure in portable document format
(PDF). The SOS must, within two business days, provide a
hyperlink that is easily accessible to the public and which
makes the petition available in a format that can be downloaded
and printed.
AB 1117 requires the SOS to include a disclaimer on the Internet
Web page where the petitions are accessible stating that the
petition was prepared by the proponent of the proposed measure,
that the proponent is solely responsible for its contents and
that the Secretary of State does not warrant or represent that
the petition is in correct legal form. The SOS will be required
to remove the hyperlink to a petition within two business days
after the final date for circulation of the petition.
Staff Comments: Under existing law, initiative and referendum
proponents already can choose to post and circulate downloadable
petitions on the Internet. Voters can "self circulate" an
initiative by printing and signing the petition and sending it
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to the proponent. Additionally, proponents can provide contact
information to the Secretary of State which is then posted on
the SOS Web site so that members of the public can easily
contact initiative proponents for information, copies of texts,
etc. AB 1117 will allow individual voters to download an
initiative directly from the SOS website and collect multiple
signatures on that petition before sending it to the proponents.
According to the Secretary of State, security and other issues
could arise because initiatives are currently printed on a
single piece of paper so that the title, summary, and text of
the measure appear on one page along with the signatures. This
process helps to protect against voter fraud. This "single
piece of paper" process cannot be done on an 81/2" x 11" piece
of paper which is what most individuals use at home. It is very
likely that people would end up printing out the text of the
measure separately from the signature page thereby creating a
situation where fraud can easily occur. Additionally, current
law requires petition circulators to be registered voters and by
allowing any individual to print an initiative from the
Secretary of State's Web site and begin collecting signatures
circumvents the registered voter requirement in current law.
The potential for increased investigation costs stem from the
likelihood of fraud reports due to the complexities of petition
circulation requirements in conjunction with untrained
self-circulators who may either fail to keep voter information
confidential, fail to accurately describe what the measure does,
intentionally or unintentionally attach signatures to the wrong
petition, unlawfully refuse to provide voters with the entire
text of the initiative, or fail to comply with specific font and
text printing guidelines.