Declaring
that “changing the method of signatures is a distraction,” Connecting
California columnist and Zocalo Public Square editor Joe Mathews offered a
thoughtful riposte to an inquiry regarding the refusal of the ACLU of
California to support the campaign of the Coalition for an E-Initiative (https://www.facebook.com/CoalitionForAnEInitiative)
to win California voters the right to sign official initiative petitions online
on the grounds that online signature-gathering “could be used to more easily
qualify initiatives that seek to limit fundamental rights.”
Bringing a
bit of realism to the discussion, the journalist tells Etopia News:
“I
think you and the ACLU are both wrong. There's no real reason to worry that
e-signature gathering would make it easier to qualify measures for the ballot,
in and of itself. It still will remain very difficult, and costly, to get the
hundreds of thousands of signatures necessary to qualify for the ballot.
Initiative sponsors will have to spend millions to get the attention of signers
and to employ people to approach people to sign on-line (probably on iPads and
tablets) that are carried around. Changing the method of signatures is a
distraction. We need less costly, alternative paths to the ballot that allow
initiatives to qualify because the ideas in the initiatives are found to be
worthy after participatory, deliberative processes.”
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