Journal pudge's Journal: Do You Have a Right to Petition in Secret? 15
Yesterday, in the final U.S. Supreme Court case heard by Justice John Paul Stevens, my good friend Larry Stickney and his group, Protect Marriage Washington, squared off against Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna in Doe #1 v. Reed to determine whether public disclosure of petition signatures is routinely allowed under the First Amendment; that is, whether such dislosure should be done only under strict scrutiny, narrowly tailored to serve a government interest, or, whether the state can simply release the signatures upon a normal request for public records.
You may recall the events that led to this case: Stickney and his group got R-71 on the ballot last year, which attempted to kill the "everything but marriage" law for gay couples. Pro-gay activists threatened him and his family, and others who publicly supported repealing that law. Some groups requested lists of the petition signators, with the obvious intent to harass and open them up to threats, which has an undoubtable "chilling effect" on whether people will sign petitions in the future.
You can make a strong case for keeping these signatures out of the public. The question is whether the First Amendment has anything to say about it, or whether states should be free to make their own policies.
Attorney James Bopp represented the John Does and Protect Marriage Washington. He drew comparisons -- and important distinctions -- to other disclosures, such as campaign finance and voter affiliation, noting that specific and overriding government interests were involved.
I won't get too far into the details, you can read the transcript itself -- which is more interesting than I thought it might be -- I think Justice Scalia sums up my view:
"And in light of the fact that for the firstcentury of our existence, even voting was public
He continues: "Didn't you have some options, too? Have you started a referendum to repeal the -- the [Washington] law that requires disclosure?
I feel very badly about these terrible people who threatened the Stickney family. I think our laws do not do enough to protect them by going after mentally unstable scum like John Bisceglia who use explicitly violent and targeted rhetoric to quiet free speech. And I think maybe our laws should exempt petition signatures from the Public Records Act, and instead rely on a separate process for verification.
But I don't see how our federal Constitution has anything to do with it.
Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.
that's what the 2nd amendment is for..... (Score:2)
I think our laws do not do enough to protect them by going after mentally unstable scum like John Bisceglia who use explicitly violent and targeted rhetoric to quiet free speech.
I know, probably not a politically correct way of looking at it, but there you go. I'm involved in our local political scene. Work the polls as a poll worker, campaign for local candidates that I like, that sort of thing. I've never been threatened but I know people who have. Two of them bought firearms, one already owned them. Thankfully the threats haven't been carried out, but my friends are still ready to defend themselves if the need should arise.
One of my favorite things to point out to the anti
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Scalia's teh awesome. Wrong sometimes, but always awesome.
As to intimidation ... see, this John Bisceglia jerk is himself armed and making not-so-veiled threats. He is gay and claims "disability" because of "discrimination," which really means the government pays his bills because he is so angry about laws regarding gays that he has disabled himself. And this anger could very well spill out into real action. Government should step in, and I am angry that it hasn't. I see his "threats" as actionable. I
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Out of curiosity, which case do you think Scalia was on the wrong side of? I don't doubt he has been, just wondering when.
Sounds like that guy has probably broken a few laws, not sure why law enforcement wouldn't act on it? You'd probably know that better than I would living out that way. Maybe the Feds can be written off as being politically motivated, but what about local law enforcement?
The threats that I've heard of in the political arena were more mundane -- one person got threatened because he wa
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Out of curiosity, which case do you think Scalia was on the wrong side of? I don't doubt he has been, just wondering when.
I am of a mixed mind about his concurring decision in Raich. That's the most prominent one I think of.
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I'd concur with that. The notion that interstate commerce includes the growing of plants for my own personal consumption has always struck me as suspect. Filburn comes to mind, though obviously Scalia didn't have anything to do with that.
I wish we could have an honest debate about the merits or lack thereof of cannabis prohibition in this country. That doesn't seem likely to happen in the near term though. Too many loud people on either extreme and no political gain for anyone in elected office who is
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We already disclose whether or not you voted in most states. I can pull lists of every registered voter in my county and see which elections they've voted in.
But not what you voted on. So to me the analogous disclosure level would be did or did not sign one or more petitions in which years, but not which ones a person signed.
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Most of my experience with petitions relates to petitions to get a candidate on the ballot. In that instance the petition needs to be signed by so many registered voters whom live in the appropriate electoral district. If the names of the signers aren't part of the public record, how do interested third parties verify that the candidate met the legal requirements for ballot access?
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How do interested third parties verify an election result? I don't think the authorities share who voted for what, but rather the aggregate numbers. If an elections organization can certify that a majority of votes were cast for somebody or something, it seems they could certify that sufficient signatures were obtained for somebody or something.
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If an elections organization can certify that a majority of votes were cast for somebody or something, it seems they could certify that sufficient signatures were obtained for somebody or something.
That's different because of the methods employed. We're talking about non-governmental people gathering signatures and doing no verification of identity. So the government then has to verify after the fact, and they often do only a percentage because there's so many, and may, of course, do a poor job of verifying.
For voting, usually, you go to a polling place and prove your identity to the pollworker. This is a much more reliable system for verification, and people in public can watch it all go down.
In W
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Most of my experience with petitions relates to petitions to get a candidate on the ballot. In that instance the petition needs to be signed by so many registered voters whom live in the appropriate electoral district. If the names of the signers aren't part of the public record, how do interested third parties verify that the candidate met the legal requirements for ballot access?
An excellent question, but there's a very good answer.
It's not that they are not a part of the public record, first of all, but whether they can be released to anyone who wants them. There's a process, used regularly, whereby an interested party can verify signatures, but it's done without fully releasing them to the public. I don't know the details -- whether it is done at the govt facility so they don't actually get out, or if it is simply done by legal order to not release the names -- but it does not
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Out of curiosity, are the voter rolls public records in your state? In NYS they are -- complete with address, party affiliation, phone number (if provided), etc. The only part of the voter registration that's kept out of the public record is your SSN and/or DMV number.
Needless to say, this leads to difficulty for certain people. Domestic violence victims are advised not to register to vote, lest their abusers track them down via the voter rolls. I don't regard it as particularly fair that a crime victi
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Out of curiosity, are the voter rolls public records in your state?
Yes.
address, party affiliation, phone number (if provided), etc.
Yes, though we do not have party affiliation.
Needless to say, this leads to difficulty for certain people. Domestic violence victims are advised not to register to vote, lest their abusers track them down via the voter rolls.
I have heard there is a way you can keep your info secret in special circumstances like this.
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So to me the analogous disclosure level would be did or did not sign one or more petitions in which years, but not which ones a person signed.
I agree with that, that it would be analagous, but it also wouldn't work well at all. It shows a big difference between voting and signing a petition. When you vote you can vote multiple ways on a question; in a petition, you can only sign one way. So in a year where there's only one or two major petitions, if all the major ones are "right-wing" petitions, then we can guess if you signed, you're "right-wing."
That's not the case this year, but in past years, it has been.
We have to be careful with disclosu
Expected to be private? (Score:2)
I think there's obvious precedent for privacy in political speech. For example, the federalist Papers.
The only real question is if signing a petition is intended to be protected by confidentiality. While openness is desired, the chilling effect of being attacked in response should probably be avoided. I'm not sure if there's a 1st ammendment protection for it, though.
I think I also agree with Scalia: repeal the law if you think it's harmful. You probably have proof now that disclosure can inhibit speec
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The only real question is if signing a petition is intended to be protected by confidentiality.
Right, and the law doesn't say that it is so protected.
Maybe we'll get a better disclosure law out of this. Although I am very wary of this. Our Governor has repeatedly lied about not providing public records, saying she has a right of refusal based on "executive privilege." But our law says that only exemptions in the law can be used, and no such exemption is in the law. I fear that if we open it up to new exemptions, even if I like those exemptions, we'll get a bunch of exemptions I do NOT want to see