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May 24, 2006

Westlund to Use Paid Petitioners

Oregon Independent gubernatorial candidate Ben Westlund has decided to use paid petitioners to gather signatures so his name can appear on the November ballot.

I hope Westlund selects a reputable signature gathering company (are there any?) or, even better, hires someone experienced in petition drives to manage the effort in-house. I would caution him to be very careful that he can trust his team - petitioners have been known to intentionally sabotage drives they did not support.

As much as one might be concerned about paid petitioning, he really does not appear to have a choice here. Volunteers tend to be unreliable, and mass mailings, even to good lists of supporters, produce negligible returns. To gather the nearly 19,000 valid signatures he needs, he really needs to gather 25,000 – and maybe more, considering the confusion he is likely to run into with people who don't realize that if they voted in the Primary on a Republican or Democrat ballot, they can't sign Westlund's petition. With typical mass-mailing return rates, he would have to mail ballots to every person in Oregon, and of course, not every person in Oregon is actually registered to vote.

That said, I share some of the concern that is being expressed about what the campaign's inability to gather signatures actually means.

Lisa Grove, a Portland pollster who works for Kulongoski's campaign, says Westlund's use of paid petition carriers undercuts his claims that he has lots of "grass roots" supporters.

The problem could also be a matter of inexperienced staff on the campaign. With the right staff to oversee a signature drive of that size, it is possible, even without tremendous grassroots support (which is likely a name recognition problem), to find volunteers to get the job done. Possible, but not easy and not cheap. In fact, volunteer petition drives can cost as much as – or even more than – paid petition drives.

The Westlund campaign certainly has a tough battle ahead. I hope they are able to get things pulled together quickly. If they don't, however, they can always mount a write-in campaign.

Posted by Becky at May 24, 2006 06:29 AM

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