Opinion ID: 1401833
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The State's Interest in Eliminating Fraud

Text: When a State places a severe or significant burden on a core political right, like here, it faces a well-nigh insurmountable obstacle to justify it. Meyer, 486 U.S. at 425, 108 S.Ct. 1886; cf. Buckley, 525 U.S. at 192 n. 12, 119 S.Ct. 636. The provision must be narrowly tailored and advance a compelling state interest. Timmons, 520 U.S. at 358, 117 S.Ct. 1364; Meyer, 486 U.S. at 423-24, 108 S.Ct. 1886. Although a State need not present elaborate, empirical verification of the weight of its purported justification when the burden is moderate, see Timmons, 520 U.S. at 364, 117 S.Ct. 1364, it must come forward with compelling evidence when the burden is higher, see Buckley, 525 U.S. at 203-04, 119 S.Ct. 636; Meyer, 486 U.S. at 425-28, 108 S.Ct. 1886. While eliminating election fraud is certainly a compelling state interest, § 3599.111 is not narrowly drawn. First, there is no evidence in the record that most, many, or even more than a de minimis number of circulators who were paid by signature engaged in fraud in the past. The State points primarily to the 2004 presidential election, when circulators trying to get Ralph Nader on the ballot engaged in fraud. The circulators were paid on a per-signature basis. CTR, 462 F.Supp.2d at 834. While this is evidence that circulators who were paid per-signature engaged in fraud, it does not prove that the per-signature feature actually caused or significantly contributed to the circulators' fraudulent acts. At most, the evidence of fraud associated with the Nader election effort and other elections is evidence of correlation, not causation. Of course, just as CTR argues that per-signature payment creates a better incentive for hard, efficient work and valid signatures, it cannot escape the flip-side of the argument: the payment also creates an economic incentive to engage in fraud by padding signatures (whether by forgery, false certification or false pretense). Just as the Supreme Court took judicial notice in Meyer that it is often more difficult to get people to work without compensation than it is to get them to work for pay, 486 U.S. at 423, 108 S.Ct. 1886, we can take judicial notice that there is an incentive to inflate the measure of output when payment is directly tied to that output. If a person gets paid by the hour, there is an incentive to pad hours; if a person gets paid by the signature, there is an incentive to pad signatures. That is not to say, of course, that someone faced with the incentive to pad signatures will actually act upon it. That is an empirical question, one for which there is little in the record to answer. The State has not, for example, pointed to evidence from Oregon suggesting a marked decrease in the level of election fraud since its per-signature ban was enacted. While there is some evidence that validity rates have increased, see supra, there are many non-fraudulent reasons why signatures are rejected (e.g., insufficient information about the signer, illegible handwriting). The State's correlation evidence is relevant, if only circumstantial, evidence, but it is a far cry from showing that the provision is narrowly tailored (or even reasonably tailored) to the State's legitimate interest in reducing election fraud. As explained in Meyer, courts should not be prepared to assume that a professional circulator-whose qualifications for similar future assignments may well depend on a reputation for competence and integrity-is any more likely to accept false signatures than a volunteer who is motivated entirely by an interest in having the proposition placed on the ballot. 486 U.S. at 426, 108 S.Ct. 1886. Moreover, Ohio already has criminalized election fraud, specifically with regard to false signatures. See O.R.C. § 3599.28 (making false signatures on election-related documents a felony of the fifth degree). This and other criminal provisions of Ohio election law are the types of protections that the Supreme Court has found adequate to deter improper conduct with regard to petition circulation, especially since the risk of fraud or corruption, or the appearance thereof, is more remote at the petition stage of an initiative than at the time of balloting. Meyer, 486 U.S. at 427, 108 S.Ct. 1886 (citations omitted). Accordingly, under the exacting scrutiny of Meyer and Buckley, Ohio's per-time-only requirement is not sufficiently tied to its otherwise legitimate interest.