The cost of getting citizen-led initiatives on the ballot has nearly doubled since 2020
The cost of getting citizen-led initiatives on the ballot has nearly doubled since 2020
One month ago, “Marketplace Morning Report” brought you a series on money, politics and whether campaign donors can be “secret Santas” who spend big without voters ever knowing they’re the ones doing it. The coverage centered on Arizona, where voters are deciding whether some of the biggest campaign spenders should have to reveal their true identities.
The measure, Arizona Proposition 211, only got onto the ballot because a citizen-led campaign gathered enough signatures in support. Only about half of U.S. states allow for statewide initiatives, but for those that do, we wanted learn more about what it takes to make a grassroots campaign like this happen.
“Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio spoke with Ryan Byrne, managing editor of Ballotpedia’s ballot measures team, to discuss the economics of it all. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
David Brancaccio: It’s not every state that allows these. But in the ones that do, how expensive is it?
Ryan Byrne: Right. So, as you said, not every state has an initiative process. Of the ones that do, the signature drive process can be fairly expensive. In 2022, the average signature drive was over $4 million. This is actually an increase from 2020 when it was just over $2 million. So we’ve nearly seen a double just from 2020 to 2022. And it doesn’t necessarily appear that 2022 is an exception. There’s been a trend line, since at least 2016, of petition drives becoming more expensive.
Brancaccio: So it’s not just ambient inflation, they had to buy more expensive gas for their cars?
Byrne: Right. I’m sure that plays somewhat of a role this year. But there are a number of factors that could be affecting those changes in the cost of gathering signatures.
Brancaccio: Like what? I’m also thinking about the tight labor market, you gotta find bodies to do this?
Byrne: Yeah. So I think, you know, the campaigns have been citing issues. Since at least December, we’ve seen campaigns in the news discussing the issues that they’re running into a signature gathering. One that they often highlight is changes in ballot law. So in several states, the process has changed in recent years. Just to throw some examples out there, Florida banned pay-per-signature, as did Utah and Arkansas. They’ve instituted a number of other requirements that make the signature collection process — I don’t want to necessarily say more difficult. It could be more difficult, more tedious. There’s more steps, there’s more things they have to do, which could be driving up the cost.
Brancaccio: Pay-per-signature. That’s what you’re saying?
Byrne: Right, pay-per-signature. So pay-per-signature is the policy that you can pay people based on the number of signatures they collect. Of course, the other approach, when you ban pay-per-signature, you can still pay people by the hour. But that brings up a number of arguments and debates around this. I think advocates of pay-per-signature will say it’s more cost effective, right? If you’re a signature gatherer, are you going to collect more signatures if you’re getting paid $15 an hour or $5 a signature? You might find that one spot where you can collect a bunch of signatures in one hour.
On the other hand, opponents, as we may have seen in Florida — we’ve seen this cited in a number of states — opponents equate it to bounty hunting, right? So being paid by signature may incentivize misleading words or actions. So this is actually a big issue, pay-per-signature, banning pay-per-signature has come up in a number of states.
Brancaccio: Right, and let’s not let that obscure the fact that it takes a lot of volunteers to do this, people not getting money.
Byrne: Right, that’s true. So campaigns, of course, can also use volunteers. It’s not too common these days to see completely volunteer-driven campaigns, but many campaigns have volunteers, in addition to paid signature gatherers. And there’s still cost to organizing training, supervising volunteers, but generally, the more volunteers you have, that will drive down the signature costs rather than driving it up.
Brancaccio: And the cost of a ballot initiative doesn’t necessarily end on Tuesday, Election Day. Often there’s a legal challenge. And for those who want to their initiative to actually be put into practice, get put into law, there may be ongoing charges.
Byrne: That’s right. With ballot initiatives, they’re often contentious policies. And when a lawsuit is initiated, that means — sometimes the state funds it because it’s now law. Sometimes the supporters need to fund their lawsuit. So yeah, this can continue for quite some time after the election, spending money in order to continue to support the ballot initiative.
Brancaccio: I was struck by just how involved this can be. We were doing reporting in Arizona last month where they have among other ballot initiatives, one that would force certain campaign donors above a certain threshold to reveal their names, right? It’s a disclosure thing. And this is the fourth time they’ve tried it. First time, their big funder pulled out realized he liked dark money. That’s the story I was told. Second time, enough signatures were challenged that it didn’t make it. Third time, COVID, they couldn’t gather, so they bailed. This is the fourth time, we’ll see what happens. But I’m sure many of these campaigns in the states that have citizen-led initiatives, they must have interesting stories.
Byrne: Oh yeah. I’m sure there’s many of them. It’s not uncommon to see what you guys observed in Arizona, that campaigns may try over multiple years before they get an issue on the ballot.
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