The Banality of Bureaucracy

How can it be that voices of 40% of Iowa City citizens fully qualified to sign a petition end up being stifled?

When gathering signatures for our traffic surveillance initiative we had to collect 4,300 signatures in order to reach the 2,500 “valid” signatures required by our City Charter — 72% more than should have been necessary. Collectively, we spent somewhere between 1,000 to 1,500 hours amassing signatures.

Most of these signatures were, in fact, valid, just not according to the bureaucratic process the City Hall used for counting.

You see, despite the fact that in Iowa one can register to vote and then cast an actual ballot on the same day, the Iowa City Charter still contains an outdated distinction between potential vs. registered voters, and petition signers are required to be registered voters (so-called “qualified electors”).

The practical consequences of this requirement are disastrous.

Since the only way to enforce the restriction is to compare each and every petition signature with the latest voter registration rolls, that’s what the City Clerk office does every time somebody submits a petition that appears to have enough signatures. The process is as manual and imprecise as you can imagine, involving huge physical volumes of voter registration rolls, second-guessing people’s handwriting, jumping between volumes and pages, back and forth, back and forth, in attempt to verify each signature, and, for roughly 40% of the signatures, giving up and striking the signature out. The process usually takes about two weeks of full-time work, and can even involve overtime.

If you ever want to completely stall the City Clerk’s Office, all you need to do is to file a new petition with 2,500 signatures every two weeks.

Now, let’s go back to those signatures (forty percent!) that are being stricken out. One thing to keep in mind is that every petition that reaches the City Clerk’s desk is accompanied by the so-called Affidavit of Circulator — one per each citizen circulating the petition — in which that citizen certifies that they personally oversaw the signature gathering and, to their best knowledge, each signature represents a valid signer — and that the citizen is “liable to criminal penalties as provided by State Law” if they file a false affidavit.

So: we are talking about 40% of the signatures that both the petition gatherers and, by logical extension, the citizens who signed the petition, believed to be valid.

Let that sink in for a moment.

How can it be that voices of 40% of the citizens who in good faith believed that they, being Iowa City residents and registered to vote, are qualified to sign the petition — end up being stifled?

Well, this is something that we call the banality of bureaucracy.

Many of the discarded signatures are simply hard to read — after all, they are handwritten names collected on the street, often in less than perfect weather, often in a hurry, using an unsteadily held clipboard, and perhaps a pen that refuses to write in freezing cold. To “verify” that handwritten signature, it’s not enough to simply discern someone’s full name, you also need to be able to read the street address, and then match both with a valid voter registration record.

To the City Clerk’s credit, all petitioners who come to City Hall to get the petition forms are fully informed about the “illegibility” issue, and so when collecting signatures, they usually make a point to ask citizens to print the name and address as clearly as possible. And still, you’d be surprised at the percentage of signatures that end up being not fully readable and require second-guessing.

Then comes the issue of the address. Some people forget to write their apartment number. Some are registered, but moved since last election. Some are registered at their parents’ Iowa City address, but write in their current residence address. In all these cases, if the signee did not provide their birth date (which people are surprisingly reluctant to do), the signature will be discarded.

Similarly with names. Somebody might be registered as Katherine but sign the petition as Kate — no birth date to verify identity with 100% accuracy? Discarded. Missed the middle initial? Ditto.

Finally, there are people who are not registered to vote at the time of signing, but take a voter registration form and promise to file it “tomorrow.” You may have been that person.

As we said, it’s all pretty banal, and yet the result is: 40% of citizens who were questioned, briefed, convinced, “qualified” & thanked might as well have not signed anything.

The question that ultimately needs to be asked is this: What good is a petition process that routinely discards 40% of legitimate signatures on the basis of technicalities?

Other than for keeping the petitions from reaching the ballot and keeping the status quo, not much.

First, since current Iowa law provides for election day voter registration, the distinction between residents who are registered and those who are not is not significant, period. All citizens of voting age should have an equal right to petition their government. The current process is outdated and discriminatory at best, and possibly unconstitutional.

In essence, the City is currently denying legitimate petitioners their vote in an attempt to prevent potential fraud that is in the end inconsequential: a petition is not the same as a law, but only a proposal before the City Council or the voters. If the petition is misguided, frivolous or simply not worthy of citizens’ attention, it simply will not be adopted by the council or the voters. There is no need to protect us from ourselves.

One can’t even argue that the provision for verifying signatures against the voter registration rolls exists to conserve the City resources. If there is a citizen out there who is willing to spend thousands of hours collecting signatures for one or a few frivolous petitions, they can do it now — and, as mentioned earlier, if they gather enough seemingly valid signatures, they will disrupt the normal City Clerk’s Office operations for weeks. If the provision did not exist, the frivolous petitions would go straight to the City Council, which is likely to spend less than 5 minutes to vote them down, thus automatically putting them on the ballot in the next regular city election. No special election, no extra money spent, just an additional item on an existing ballot that, if it’s indeed frivolous, will simply make voters smile (or frown) as they vote ‘No’.

The final absurd twist is that petitions for changing the City Charter — the very document that imposes the “qualified electors” restriction on ordinary petitions to the City — are not required, nor allowed, to be “verified” in the same manner as ordinary petitions, need a lesser number of signatures to be valid (10% vs 25% of the persons who voted at the last preceding regular city election), and have to be put to vote in a special city election.

The good news is, there is a real chance that, come summer, the “qualified” electors restriction will be history. The bad news is, you need to fight for it.

As you might have heard, Iowa City is currently going through its Charter review process — a once every 10 years occurrence — and the Charter Review Commission, after holding a final public input session this Wednesday, will start drafting its recommendations for amending the Charter.

The topic of “eligible” vs. “qualified” electors has been repeatedly brought up before, and thoroughly discussed by the Commission. As it turns out, the proposal to remove the “qualified electors” provisions has overwhelming public support, as well as the support of ACLU of Iowa.

The commission received at least 6 letters from the public in support of this change (and none against), and 80% of the people who spoke at the first public forum and commented on this issue were in favor of making this change.

ACLU of Iowa has sent the Commission a legal brief arguing that the provisions “are in direct conflict with state law in numerous ways” and “separate voters into classes and burden the right to petition the government in ways that are arbitrary, unreasonable, and likely unconstitutional”.

And yet the commission remains split on the issue; the fact that two of the Commission members who don’t want to make the change are the ex-City Manager and one ex-City Councilperson, both of whom have served on a previous Charter Commission, probably doesn’t help.

Positions of the Commission members who are opposed to the change have drifted with time from “it’s reasonable to require that citizens go to some effort to participate in city government” — a comment that is completely is missing the point — to “…The ones who do not care enough to register are the ones who don’t necessarily read the paper, read the information, know how to make an informed vote. […] If you aren’t informed enough to say I want to be registered and participate I think this is wrong to change it.”, and worse.

Another recently voiced objection was rooted in the fact that a successful petition, if not enacted by the Council, must be put on the ballot for the people’s vote — the implication being that they would prefer the petition process in which the City Council can simply discard petitions at will, no action required.

If this unabashed elitism and stubborn rationalization of the status quo makes you angry, good! It should! More angry voters showing up and speaking up is the only thing that can tip the balance on this issue.

First of all, come to the Iowa City Charter Review Commission’s final public forum (January 7, 6:30–8:30pm, Iowa City Public Library, Meeting Room A) and let the commission members know you want them to remove the “qualified elector” requirement for persons signing referendum and initiative petitions from our city Charter.

If you can’t make it to the forum, the second best thing is showing up and commenting at one of the regular Commission’s meetings, which are scheduled to be held on Jan 13, Jan 27, Feb 10 and Feb 24 at 7:45am in the Helling Conference room of the City Hall (make sure to check the city calendar the day before to confirm).

You can also send a letter to the Charter Review Commission at citycharter@iowa-city.org (please include your name and address, see http://www.icgov.org/?id=2330 for more details). If you do that, make sure to send a copy as a letter to the editor to our local papers:

• Press Citizen — opinion@press-citizen.com
• Daily Iowan — daily.iowan.letters@gmail.com
• Gazette — editorial@thegazette.com

Last but not least, share this post, talk to your friends and family about this issue, and ask them to go to the forum or one of the meetings, send in their own letters, and spread the word further.

To make your voice count in the future, you need to make it be heard now.

Other changes being considered by the Iowa City Charter Review Commission can be found here: http://www.icgov.org/apps/news/?newsID=10184

Comments? Send us an email at team@stopbigbrother.org