Making a list and checking it twice: How a petition gets approved (or not)
September 4, 2012 at 7:17 pm in Grand Forks Herald
The first mistake Lee Ann Oliver notices on a petition is that there aren’t enough mistakes. Every line is filled in completely. Every name is printed neatly. There are no abbreviations or illegible portions. None of the signatories is from out of state. Continue Reading
This is really interesting. Ballots were turned in just three weeks or so ago. Are we really to believe that they reached all of these people to verify and invalidate in that amount of time? Just how many people do they have working on this?
Or–and this is a bit chilling–do they take the lack of return of information from a postcard sent just a few weeks ago to mean those signatures are all invalid?
Something smells here, and it ain’t wacky weed (which I am not in favor of legalizing, by the way).
Lee Ann Oliver has made rich farmers, cattle ranchers, and oil and gas barons that she works for happy!
I hope Ducks Unlimited, Pheasants Forever, and other major conservation orgs press ND officials on this one in a BIG way.
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Well, basically what happened with most of the signatures is the petitions looked really bad as far as they didn’t look like real signatures. So they asked the carriers again if everything was on the up and up and a bunch of the carriers were not stupid enough to again swear everything was okay.
So the petitions carried (or not really carried) by those people were thrown out completely. Could have been, probably were, some or many true signatures on those petitions but because the petitions are spoiled, they weren’t counted either.
Then you have the normal mistakes, people from out of state who signed. Those who signed Daffy Duck and so on. Seems like any petitiion has some of those.
And so you end up with the valid signatures from the valid petitions.
The medical marijuana didn’t have enough signatures after the throwing out of ballots so they didn’t even send out the normal 2000 cards to check.
Note that they don’t throw out a signature just because the person doesn’t respond. Instead, in the case of the conservation set aside, they got lots of I didn’t sign that replies. That’s when they went back to the petition carriers and that threw out so many the conservation didn’t make it. Then guess what, the same guys carried for the medical marijuana and they wouldn’t say again those were good either. So out they went and that was that.
Seems the carriers must of had this idea that no one would actually check anything or were too stupid to catch fraud.
I wonder if that’s how they’ve been doing their schoolwork.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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Marv….good overview of situation I think. Any anger or dissapointment shouldnt be directed at state officials…but more so at the organizers of those measures who allowed this to happen.
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The blame doesn’t fall on the organizers so much as the young men that found it necessary to commit fraud.
Cutting corners and cheating.
Are these the standards that the NDSU football program teaches the players?
And NDSU allows them to continue to play because winning is more important than anything else.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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You are correct too Lee…
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My understanding is this–and I’m sticking with it until proven wrong–the young men from NDSU and the vast majority of clearly false signatures were for the marijuana issue, NOT the dedication of a portion of oil and gas revenues back to conservation of the resources.
And there’s this too–the tally didn’t miss the mark by much on the oil/gas dedication–it missed it by much more on the wacky weed one.
I am happy to be proven wrong, but no much of my wrath is going to be focused on the partisan election officials in ND.
And it isn’t just this issue either. It clearly isn’t just about doing their job anymore, it’s gone partisan.
I can probably take my sporting dollars to South Dakota I guess, it’s sure not the same in western ND anymore anyway.
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Legalizing medical marijuana may not be important to you but to someone battling terminal cancer it may be. The process was tampered with yet the individuals responsible get to take advantage of the system and play an entire season like nothing happened. That is wrong. None of us are surprised by the coach and the AD’s decision to let these players continue with the game. We are used to this happening in the world of sports. Who else gets a pass like this? You call it whacky weed. To a cancer patient it is a natural remedy used to reduce pain and boost the appetite. What difference does it make which petition was tampered with? A petition was tampered with. That is the gist of it.
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This whole fiasco: unrealistic levels of completeness on ballots (the bureaucrats really do run the world; elected office holders and citizens are a far second) and a system easily open to fraud point to the need for an easier, more automated system.
I can do darn near whatever banking I need to from my phone. Their are multiple layers of security to prove I am me. It would save time, money, and heart ache if this process was moved online. Either by password, or some form of biological recognition (fingerprint scanner, retina display, etc.) you insure the process is 99.9% accurate – a much higher rate than now, this story proves it – and put the process online.
That way, everyone with a computer or access to a library (if any still exist) can sign the petition at will. The AG office charges whatever the appropriate fee is. My guess is it will be less than what the groups pay now for paid signature gathers.
People still mistrust ATMs, preferring to go into the bank; but they are dying off. Even my 80 year old mother has learned to love her ATM card. This would be much the same. After a great deal of hullabaloo over safety, people would realize the system works and start asking why we have not done this for years.
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@FN With the number of cases of banks computer systems being broken into and information stolen. Millions of credit card numbers stolen and people having to go through the trouble of either 1) Regaining their identity or 2) the significantly lesser of the evils, closing accounts and getting new cards issued.
Then there are the government computer systems that have been compromised, even the FBI has been hacked.
Then there are the minor things like the number of online games who’s had their user accounts compromised. Even an encryption company had its authenticator compromised. The same encryption authenticators used by online banking systems and games to protect accounts. You know the ones, push a button to get a key code as a second layer of protection to your system.. Yeah those have been compromised.
Cell phones.. Please not even close to secure. I can go to an electronics store, spend about $100.00 and I would have complete access to your phone and your life FN. Don’t believe me, go to pipl.com and put your name in and see how much information is on the internet about just you. That is just a simple site. With a piece or two from that site, I can then get access to how many loans you have out, what you are worth, what your spending habits are, what major box stores you visit, etc.
You want to trust security of something like this to that type of security. Voting online not in your life. They can’t even keep track of the number of illegals in this country, or the people who are using deceased persons social security numbers.
Then there is the cost of a the technology, and then finally.. EVERYTHING can be forged.
Is the paper system even close to the best system. Nope. But as you rely on technology you open yourself to even greater issues.
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Why not just get chipped in order to sign a petition or vote? How much individual liberties are people willing to give a way for the sake of security?
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I just had to change my credit card and its number. This is the second time this has happened. I am careful who I deal with when I charge (stores and online purchases).
Lickily, I am not responsible for the unauthorized charges.
Identity theft is common.
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The. Only thing that smells funny is the actions of these individuals who signed a legal document saying they would not comit fraud and actually collect these signitures. Instead they decided to go grab a phone book and forge hundreds of names and adresses. These guys will pay the price legally and hopefully on the field also. If everyone has a clean record I would like to see these guys suspended for a few games and be prosecuted with some sort of probation and education on the seriousness of their offenses. It was a stupid but serious mistake and should be punished as one.
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” If everyone has a clean record I would like to see these guys EXPELLED FROM SCHOOL and be prosecuted with some sort of PRISON TIME. It was a stupid but serious mistake and should be punished as one.”
There. Fixed it for you.
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Criminals who screw with the legislative process should be elected, not hired.
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A technological solution, that wouldn’t be as susceptible to tampering, would be a handheld digitizer with a printer, like parking enforcement officials use. Have the signer use the attached keyboard to type in all their info, sign with a stylus, then automatically print it all onto a roll of paper, which would then be visible to the signer and the person circulating the petition. This would give an immediate paper copy with perfectly legible info, a legal signature, and a digital database saved onto a memory card to use for validating info.
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Tim, please take your sporting dollars north to canada! At least no one cares about canadian sports. Your opinions are very biased and make superfans look like bandwagon fans. You are so blinded by the glory that real life and peoples actions do not matter. So I plead don’t embarress the poor south dakotan fans. Go north where no one cares anyways. (P.s. I have 0 ties and could care less about nd sports but you still make me feel their embaressment of you)
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Shurkey, if it is proven they used ndsu resources, to facilitate their fraud, by all means expell them. This is a misdameanor, there are multiple people commiting misdomeanor offenses on campus that do not get expelled. You have people commiting felony dui that do not get expelled. The punishment has to fit the crime. Don’t get me wrong I want to see charges filed, followed by fines, community service, and probation. These actions warrant a consequence that these young people have to carry beyond college but give them a fighting chance to finish school. They will have a hard enough time finding someone to hire them with a fraud charge on their record.
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IMHO, the initiated process should be a grassroots effort.
If the citizens of the state want the legislature to do something, that the legislature will not, then the citizens have a way to intitiate the change.
An example that some citizens want changed, was the property taxes. Those with the opinion to eliminate property taxes, had the initiated measure process to put it to the voters.
Having paid petition circulators is not a way to do it, in my opinion.
If enough grass roots initiative is there for an initiated measure proposal, people will step forward to circulate the petition without pay.
Take for example the conservation petition. If that proposed intitiated measure was grassroots, environmentalists and/or hunters in the state would have gone door to door with those petitions. There are many wildlife clubs in the state that could have been approached to sponsor the petition and ask their members to go door to door.
If you have the grassroots effort to circulate the petition, then you most likely have the support of Joe Voter who will vote on it and vote for it.
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