BILL ANALYSIS
AB 2101
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Date of Hearing: April 28, 2010
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Felipe Fuentes, Chair
AB 2101 (Fong) - As Amended: April 15, 2010
Policy Committee: ElectionsVote:
6-0
Judiciary 10-0
(Consent)
Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program:
No Reimbursable:
SUMMARY
This bill authorizes a court to prevent someone convicted of
initiative fraud or voter registration fraud from being paid to
circulate petitions or register voters for up to five years
following a conviction. The bill also:
1)Provides that a person subject to such a court order may, upon
a showing of good cause, petition the court for
reconsideration of the order.
2)Makes a violation of the court order subject to a civil
penalty of up to $25,000.
FISCAL EFFECT
Potential minor costs to the court for reconsideration
proceedings and proceedings to assess civil penalties for
violations, offset to some extent by penalty revenues.
COMMENTS
1)Background . Current law prohibits certain activities with
respect to registration of voters, such as registering a
fictitious person to vote, registering a person to vote under
a false name or address, and interfering with the return of a
completed affidavit of voter registration. With respect to
the circulating initiative, referendum, or recall petitions,
examples of prohibited activities include misrepresenting the
contents, purport, or effect of the petition, refusing to
AB 2101
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allow a petition signer to read the petition, and offering or
giving money or other valuable consideration in exchange for a
person's signature on a petition.
2)Purpose . The author argues that the above problems are all
too common because people who register voters or gather
signatures on petitions are often paid a "bounty" for each
person that they register or for each signature that they
gather, and thus have a financial incentive to mislead voters.
The author notes that previous efforts to limit the ability
to pay "bounties" for collecting signatures on petitions or
registering voters have failed due to concerns that such laws
may make it more difficult for grassroots organizations to
gather signatures on petitions and register voters. The
governor made this argument last year in vetoing AB 34
(Corbett), which would have made it a misdemeanor to for a
person to receive a per-signature payment for initiative,
referendum, or recall petitions.
AB 2101 takes a narrower approach by authorizing the court to
ban those individuals convicted of such fraud from being paid
to collect signatures on initiative petitions or for
registering voters for up to five years. This bill is
patterned after laws enacted in Arizona and Oregon in 2009.
Analysis Prepared by : Chuck Nicol / APPR. / (916) 319-2081