Opinion ID: 1401833
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Character and Magnitude of Ohio's Per-Time-Only Requirement

Text: A review of the record evidence shows that Ohio's per-time-only requirement would make proposing and qualifying initiatives more expensive, primarily because of the inefficiencies inherent in a per-time-only system. The evidence also shows that so-called professional circulators would likely not work under a per-time-only system (or at least would choose a per-signature system if given the option). The evidence is mixed on how validity rates are affected. Moreover, CTR has not pointed to any evidence showing that, outside a relatively small number of professional circulators, there exists a substantial number of people or a demonstrable percentage of Ohio's population who would participate under a per-signature system but not under a per-time-only system. There is little dispute that operating under a per-time-only system will increase the costs of both proposing an initiative and qualifying it for the ballot. First, the ban eliminates the opportunity for a petitioner to enter into a fixed-price contract with a political consulting firm, signature coordinator, or circulator. Under a per-signature payment scheme, CTR can contract, for example, for 500,000 signatures at a fixed price of $1.50 per signature. The petitioner knows how much money it will need to raise at the outset to qualify its initiative. Under Ohio's per-time-only provision, however, the petitioner cannot enter into a fixed price contract to pay circulators per signature. O.R.C. § 3599.111. Moreover, § 3599.111 does not define the term person. Section 1.59(C) of the Ohio criminal code states: As used in any statute, . . . `Person' includes an individual, corporation, business trust, estate, trust, partnership, and association. Thus, a petitioner is prohibited from paying a political consulting firm, signature coordinating firm, or any other business entity to gather a specific number of signatures for a fixed price. In other words, the ban works up and down the chain from petitioner to consulting firm to signature coordinating firm to circulator. Thus, the per-time-only provision adds an element of risk to the petition process which would otherwise be absent. In addition to the increased risk, petitioners get fewer signatures for their money, according to CTR. Per-hour circulators are less efficient at gathering signatures than are per-signature circulators. The cause for this drop in efficiency is hardly novel: basic economic theory instructs that a producer will seek to maximize the output for which she gets paid until the cost to her of producing another marginal unit equals the payment she receives for it. Under the per-time-only provision, the output for which the circulator is to get paid would not be signatures, but rather time worked. Thus, the circulator would have an incentive to work as many hours as possible up to the point the wage earned for the marginal unit of time equaled the marginal cost to her of working that unit of time. The circulator's primary focus would be on the amount of time worked, not the quality of work product produced. CTR further asserts that the best, most professional coordinators and circulators are not interested in working under a per-time-only system. They purportedly can earn more money working on a per-signature basis than they can under any other system. Tracy Taylor testified that his top coordinators that qualified his last two Ohio issues refuse to go to Ohio on an hourly basis. This reluctance on the part of some professional coordinators and circulators also makes economic sense. If, for example, the professional circulators are more efficient than the average circulator in the sense that they can gather more valid signatures within a given unit of time, they will be financially better off working under a system that rewards them based on their efficiency, rather than a system which pays them based on something for which they do not have a comparative advantage, quantity of time worked. According to CTR, the cumulative effect of the inefficiencies caused by a per-time-only system increases the amount of time it takes to collect signatures, further exacerbating the risk of unforeseen costs. As a result, CTR contends that it and other firms are not only less likely to qualify their proposed initiatives for the ballot, but are less likely even to try. The State counters by pointing to the relatively stable numbers of qualifying petitions in Oregon before and after it enacted its per-signature ban in 2002. The Oregon numbers suffer, however, from a similar defect in Colorado's experience that the Supreme Court pointed out in Meyer: the statistic does not reject the possibility that even more petitions would have been successful if paid circulators had been available, or, more narrowly, that [petitioners] would have had greater success if they had been able to hire extra help. 486 U.S. at 418 n. 3, 108 S.Ct. 1886. CTR has also presented evidence that circulators paid by the time worked yield lower validity rates than circulators paid by the signature. The evidence is limited, however, and inconclusive. For example, Michael Arno stated in a declaration that his company's validity rates dropped in all three of its petition drives it handled in Oregon after the per-signature ban went into effect in that state. Lee Albright, the owner of a petition management company, testified that his firm collected signatures for an initiative in Oregon after the ban. His firm ended up collecting twice the number of signatures needed to get the initiative on the ballot because he was afraid that the amateur petition circulators would collect too many invalid signatures. However, Ohio has submitted evidence from Oregon's Secretary of State that the average validity rate on petitions actually increased from 69.63% in 2002 to 72.35% in 2004. At best, CTR has raised a question of fact whether validity rates are lower under a per-time-only scheme. Finally, there is little in the record to suggest that a substantial number of people in Ohio would be dissuaded from participating in the petition process because of a ban on all payment not based on time worked. This is not a case like in Buckley where approximately 35% of the state's population was categorically prohibited from participating. 525 U.S. at 193-94 & n. 15, 119 S.Ct. 636. Nor has CTR proffered, for example, a broad-based survey to show a demonstrable decrease in the pool of potential circulators. Accordingly, a review of the record confirms that there is no genuine issue of material fact (1) that Ohio's per-time-only requirement would make proposing and qualifying initiatives more expensive; and (2) that professional coordinators and circulators would likely not work under a per-time-only system. As to the validity rates and the available statewide pool of circulators, however, the matters are at best issues of fact.