Mary Jo Pitzl
Arizona Republic
An Arizona Supreme Court ruling affirming that paying petition passers per signature they collect is illegal is nonetheless receiving praise as a “huge win” for petition-gathering efforts.
The unanimous ruling Wednesday clarified that petition firms can use other forms of compensation, as long as they are not based on a per-signature basis, and rejected arguments that the law on its face violates the First Amendment.
That adds up to a “huge win,” said Andrew Chavez, owner of Petition Partners, a prominent signature-gathering firm that was key to the case at the heart of the high court’s ruling.
It means that the incentive programs his firm created to boost productivity by petition passers, who are paid on an hourly basis, are allowed. Those practices were challenged in a lawsuit brought by the state.
“It doesn’t make sense that we can’t pay people more to do a better job,” Chavez said of the incentives his firm devised to spur more productivity from workers gathering signatures on a petition that sought to put an education funding measure on the 2020 ballot.
Election 2022:Propositions 129, 132 limiting ballot measures OK’d; Proposition 128 on altering measures fails
