You Shouldn’t Have To Buy Democracy Anti-Paying: You, Too, Can Buy Yourself A Law

It’s too bad James Madison’s words don’t have as much impact on American politics today as does his picture - the one on a $5,000 bill.

Madison warned that “factions” - what we usually call special interests - endanger popular government.

Do they ever! Today’s factions lavishly dish out Madison’s and other presidential portraits to buy political influence average citizens can’t match.

Even the supposedly grass-roots power to write or overturn laws with initiative and referendum petitions has been mortgaged to the special-interest bankrolls.

Consultants who make their livings running such campaigns commonly pay workers 40 cents to a dollar apiece for the signatures needed to qualify issues for the ballot.

Thus, with enough money, you can write your own law, buy it a spot on the ballot, then finance a media barrage to sell it to voters.

The naive belief that those signature-gatherers who populate malls and street corners represent a groundswell of populist convictions, is a fraud. In more ways than one.

When backers of Initiative 164 were collecting names last year, a Tacoma firm hired mission residents to circulate petitions. Six of them copied names out of a phone book - in alphabetical order.

Even Sherry Bockwinkel, a Tacoma consultant who defends paying for signatures, recently turned in a worker for delivering thousands of falsified signatures to her.

Bockwinkel and others in the business complain that it’s hard to get signatures without paying a bounty for them. But why should it be easy? Authors of state constitutions included the initiative and referendum provision so citizens could correct elected lawmakers’ failures - not so privileged powerbrokers would have a consumer option when they go shopping for public policy.

The best way for individual citizens to preserve the integrity of an initiative process created in their interest is to boycott the campaigns that taint it by using paid signature-gatherers.

Washington legislators tried to outlaw the practice, but a federal judge overruled them on free-speech grounds. Let’s see … 181,000 signatures at 40 cents to a dollar each? That’s anything but free.

, DataTimes MEMO: For opposing view, see headline: Signature-buying levels playing field

The following fields overflowed: SUPCAT = EDITORIAL, COLUMN - From both sides CREDIT = Doug Floyd/For the editorial board