Progressive activists in Massachusetts have been using the citizen ballot initiative process for over 100 years to bring their proposed laws directly to the voters. But to get on the ballot, initiative campaigns must first collect 100,000 signatures of voters on an official petition supporting the proposed law, have those signatures sorted and delivered to 351 city and town election departments, retrieve them, and finally deliver them to the Secretary of State, all in under 75 days.

Before allowing a question to be put in front of the voters, it’s reasonable that its backers are required to demonstrate that it has popular support by getting 100,000 votes to sign a petition to put it on the ballot. But to collect 100,000 signatures in that short a time, a campaign would need to recruit hundreds of volunteers and have them find a busy public spot or go door to door, asking people to sign their petition. This is beyond the organizing capabilities of most grassroots activists and advocacy organizations.

The alternative is to hire a professional signature drive firm whose freelance petitioners are paid to stand in front of supermarkets, at street corners and in other public locations for eight to twelve hours a day with their clipboards. This is beyond the financial resources of most grassroots activists and advocacy organizations. In addition to paying them for their time, they also have to be reimbursed for expenses, such as travel to and from the state, hotel rooms, daily meals and rental cars to get around the state. For large signature drives, it’s necessary to hire managers to help run these crews. Plus, whether it’s a paid or volunteer drive, it’s necessary to collect a huge signature cushion, significantly above the required number, because even on a well-managed signature drive as many as 30% of the signatures are often invalid, for entirely innocent reasons. The signature may be illegible. The signer moved and did not update their voter registration to their new address. The signer is not even registered to vote but wouldn’t admit that to the petitioner.

In Massachusetts, where the requirements are relatively easy compared to most other states, it still costs well over $500,000 to hire a large enough crew of petitioners and managers full time for the one to two months it takes to collect enough signatures to put a question on the ballot. In states such as Michigan, Missouri or Ohio, where initiatives require close to half a million signatures, the project can last half a year and easily cost over $2 million. And in California and Florida, where you need close to a million signatures to get a question on the ballot, the cost is out of reach for even many well-funded organizations.

Access to the citizen ballot initiative process should not be limited only to wealthy individuals and organizations. If activists propose a good idea for a law that then passes the Attorney General’s constitutional review and has genuine popular support, they should be able to put it on the ballot without first needing to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars or find a wealthy backer to pay for the same cumbersome and purposely archaic process for collecting signatures that has existed in its current form for over 100 years – a process that the institutional insiders won’t allow to be updated to take advantage of modern technology because they don’t want to make it easier for activists to go around them to put their own independent ideas for change on the ballot.

We created this platform to simplify and democratize the process of collecting initiative petition signatures by using social media and crowdsourcing to replace paid or volunteer canvassers with clipboards in front of supermarkets. Our goal is to build an online community of 100,000 progressive voters who want to be notified by email whenever a new progressive ballot initiative campaign is about to launch so they can request the official printed petition form be sent to them.

This way, whenever a group of activists has an idea for a new initiative, they won’t need to start from scratch every time to first build a massive boots on the ground statewide signature drive organization with clipboards and walk lists and supermarket schedules, and then find a new and completely random collection of voters to sign their petition. They will just submit their idea to our group of self-selected signers to see if enough are interested in signing a petition to support putting it on the ballot.

The idea is simple. To receive a petition, each prospective signer will be asked to contribute $3 to cover the cost of processing their signature. This will include printing the petition, postage to mail it to the signer, prepaid postage to mail it back to the campaign, back office help to bundle signatures according to their city or town, couriers to deliver each bundle to the corresponding city or town’s election department for the signatures to be certified and couriers to retrieve each bundle and deliver them back to the campaign. At the end of this process, all of the certified signatures will be submitted to the Secretary of State.

The total cost of this approach is much lower than for a conventional signature drive because using social media and the US postal service to collect a signature costs a lot less than paying a petitioner to collect it in front of a supermarket. Plus we need significantly fewer signatures because we won’t have to worry about a cushion in the case of signers whose signature is disqualified because they aren’t registered. We will be able to check their registration status in advance and only send them a petition or count them in our total if they are registered to vote. Also, we’ll be able to print their name and address on the petition we send out next to the signature will go, so signatures won’t be disqualified because the election department can’t make out the signer’s handwriting.

Our first step is to recruit 100,000 Massachusetts voters who will commit to signing our Green New Deal petition. This will be a lot of work, but we only need to do it once. At the end of this first campaign, we will have activated a community of 100,000 Massachusetts environmental voters who will want to help get other environmental issues, and potentially other progressive issues, on the ballot in future election cycles. If we fall short of our goal of recruiting 100,000 voters through this online platform on this first campaign, we will continue to add to our online community of signers in future campaigns until we reach our goal. In the mean time, we can still get the remaining signatures the conventional way, by hiring petitioners to collect the shortfall in front of supermarkets, and by inviting supporters to donate $3 to $5 per signature to “sponsor” additional signatures, much like the way people sponsor their friends for a pledge walk.

So will you help launch this new tool to put progressive issues on the ballot? Do you want people to be able to vote on our Green New Deal initiative in November 2022? Then please join us by filling in your contact information in the above web form so we can send you the official petition. If enough people agree to sign the petition and contribute just $3 each, we can put this far reaching climate law on the ballot, and build this game changing platform for future citizen initiatives. And once this issue is on the ballot, you can help choose the next initiative you’d like to vote on.