Petition Pushers Exercising Rights Activism’S Healthy Grass Roots Proposals Deserve Consideration.

For all its shortcomings, ours is a remarkably stable political system. Compared with other places and other times, change here is peaceful and orderly.

So if activists annoy you with their petitions and protests, those historic tools are better than bombs and bayonets. The occasional inconvenience of having to dodge a signature-gatherer is a small price to pay for the assurance that when your own convictions are ignited, you, too, will have a valid outlet for your frustrations or your aspirations.

Sadly that aspect of the American culture sometimes irks those who, when headed for the shopping mall or an outdoor art festival, aren’t interested in interruptions for political discourse.

Many merely don’t want to exercise their own citizen rights at this time and place. Some, however, actively scorn - rather than honor - the lonely folks who do take their democratic heritage seriously.

We’ll be seeing a lot of petition pushers in the next month. Some of them are paid for the signatures they collect (a regrettable trend), some aren’t. Paid or not, they are part of the crucial forum in which ideas compete for voter support.

Washington state, a pioneer in open-government efforts, put campaign finance disclosure on the books more than two decades ago, thanks to the citizens who launched an initiative petition. Without their courage and energy, we might still not have it.

Admittedly, not every law enacted by initiative is a winner. And some are heavily influenced by moneyed interests. But such accusations apply equally to laws enacted through the normal legislative process.

The best safeguard against misguided public policy and clumsy lawmaking is more citizen involvement, not (as the harshest petition critics would like) less.

There are ample safeguards. Every initiative that becomes law does so only after enough people sign it to send it to the ballot and a majority of the voters approve it at the polls. This is how citizens are empowered. This is how citizens retain ultimate oversight of the political process. This is how the people govern themselves in fact as well as in name.

Democracy doesn’t promise outcomes, it promises opportunities. That includes the opportunity to cross the street rather than face a signature-gatherer.