Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Chief Deputy County Counsel Explains Insufficiency of Verafirma’s Electronically-Gathered Signature of Initiative Petition

Brenda Carlson, Chief Deputy County Counsel for San Mateo County, California, spoke this afternoon with Etopia News to explain the reasoning involved in Judge George A. Miram’s April 5, 2010, decision denying Michael Ni’s petition to require San Mateo County Chief Elections Official Warren Slocum to accept as valid his digitally-signed initiative petition asking that the Tax Cannabis 2010 Initiative be placed on the California ballot. That initiative has qualified for the state ballot with other, traditionally-sourced signatures.

Steve Churchwell, of DLA Piper in Sacramento, attorney for plaintiff Michael Ni, co-founder of San Jose-based Verafirma, which makes the technology he used to allegedly sign the “petition,” (quotation marks are the judge’s) had argued in his brief to the court that using the Verafirma technology was a valid means by which a registered voter could “affix” his or her signature to an initiative petition. Election Code Sections 100 and 9020 require that a petition signer “shall personally affix” his or her signature to a petition. San Mateo County counsel had argued that Mr. Ni had NOT personally “affixed” his signature to a valid petition.

Ms. Carlson said that the court was “not persuaded” that Mr. Ni had in fact affixed his signature to the petition. In fact, she said, the judge had ruled that what had been submitted to the elections office was “not even a petition,” but only an “image” of one. She said that what had been submitted was “not designed to comply” with the relevant statute and was no more valid than a rubber stamped version of a signature. She also pointed out that even on the image of the petition, the digitally-generated signature had been used twice (once for the signer as signer, once for the signer as circulator) and that the requirement that the signer’s address also be personally affixed had not been met because it appeared to have been typed in.

Judge Miram’s decision did not directly address the question of “affixing” the signature. He denied plaintiff’s request to order Mr. Slocum to accept the signature on the petition on the grounds that what was submitted was invalid because it did not contain a required one-inch margin on each page and because there was no way of validating the legitimacy of the process used to sign it without considering “extrinsic” evidence, something that the county election officials are explicitly prohibited from doing.

Ms. Carlson pointed out that the Elections Code had been updated in 2007, when the Legislature could have included digital signatures as a valid way of signing official petitions, but did not. She also referenced former Governor Pete Wilson’s veto message rejecting a 1997 bill calling for a task force to study Internet voting and the electronic signing of petitions (written by this reporter in an earlier incarnation) as evidence that the digital signing of petitions was not allowed under state law.

The fact that the state’s Government Code allows for the use of digital signatures in certain circumstances does not, she said, mean that it is a valid means of signing initiative petitions. Also, she pointed out, one condition necessary for the use of digital signatures under the terms of the Government Code is that it be agreed to by both parties to the transaction in question. Clearly, the Chief Elections Official of San Mateo County had not agreed to the use of an electronic signature in this case.

Ms. Carlson told Etopia News that, as of April 28th, her office had “not received any notice of appeal” of Ni v. Slocum.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Joe Matthews on Ni v. Slocum and 2010 Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy

Joe Mathews, political reporter, Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, and co-president of the 2010 Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy, talks about electronic signature gathering and the upcoming event meant to increase awareness of direct democratic processes

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Professor Lowenstein on FAIR Act

UCLA Law School Professor Daniel Lowenstein makes the case for the Financial Accountability in Redistricting (FAIR) Act, recorded from Westwood, California, on April 21, 2010

Friday, April 16, 2010

Stewart Taggart on DESERTEC-Asia initiative

Stewart Taggart, founder of DESERTEC-Asia, talks about this effort to create a pan-Asian renewable energy network linking Australian resources to Asian markets, recorded from Sydney, Australia, on April 16/17, 2010

Monday, April 12, 2010

Mary Leslie at LABC talks about feed-in tariff for Los Angeles

Mary Leslie, President of the Los Angeles Business Council, discusses a study from the Luskin Center for Innovation at UCLA calling for the implementation of a feed-in tariff for the City of Los Angeles, recorded from Los Angeles, California, on April 12, 2010

J.R. DeShazo on LABC Feed-in Tariff for LA Study

J.R. DeShazo, Director of the Luskin Center for Innovation at UCLA, talks about the Los Angeles Business Council report that recommends a feed-in tariff for the City of Los Angeles, recorded from UCLA on April 12, 2010

Friday, April 2, 2010

Jude Barry at Verafirma talks about online petition signing

Jude Barry, CEO of Catapult Strategies and co-founder of Verafirma, talks about the technology, legality, and politics of Verafirma's system for the online signing of official ballot initiatives, recorded from San Jose, California, on April 2, 2010