Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

In response to my post yesterday on Karin Uhlich and how many signatures she turned in, Walt Stephenson said:

Any ACORN or paid “volunteers” as I’ve been told?

-sigh-

Yes, we bring up ACORN again. Because bringing up ACORN gets so many votes for Republican candidates…by that I really mean it generates so much traffic for NewsMax.

Okay, let’s get to the heart of this allegation. Well, allegation is a strong word for it, since this is so darned silly. Yes, silly, but I feel like writing about it anyway.

A relatively well organized campaign brings out, say, a dozen volunteers on a Saturday. Now, let’s say each of those volunteers collects five signatures in two hours of walking. That’s sixty signatures in a single organized walk on one day, and you start to see how the 437 signatures that Uhlich gathered is pretty reasonable. Stephenson, of all people, should know this because he is a Republican district chair and has, no doubt, had to help candidates get their signatures.

But, hey, Stephenson says that he’s “been told” that there were paid signature gatherers and ACORN staffers collecting signatures. I knew this to be ridiculous, but I decided to call one of the people organizing Uhlich’s campaign and ask him. He stifled a laugh and said that none of the signatures were gathered by ACORN (but…he would say that, wouldn’t he?) and that the petitions are available for public inspection, complete with the signature of the person who circulated the petition. I asked him if any of the signatures were paid, he said, “Well, you were there…”

Yes, I have to admit I was there. Last Saturday, I got six signatures for Uhlich, and my walking partner also got six. I would have gotten seven except one woman was having trouble with her dog, a Great Dane named Tiny. My payment: a bagel and some orange juice.

I am not going to pretend that no campaigns ever use paid signatures. Things like initiative campaigns and independent candidate campaigns often require thousands of signatures, even for city elections that normally have smaller signature requirements. The “Public Safety First” initiative, for example, was only filed at the begining of last month and needs 9,534 valid signatures by June 2nd, I would imagine that they are going to use paid signature gatherers. But for a campaign that only required a minimum of 219 signatures? It would be a waste of time to use paid signature gatherers.

I mean no personal insult to Stephenson here, but it doesn’t say much about the local Republican party that one of their top organizers can’t imagine how someone can get a few hundred signatures without paying for them or without some sort of chicanery.