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SCOTUS Rules Petiton Signatures Are Public Record
Reader SheeEttin reminds us that back in October, the Supreme Court accepted a case testing whether or not petition signers' names could be kept anonymous. (The premise was that the act of signing a petition is covered by free speech, and thus signers are entitled to anonymity, especially to protect them from harassment.) Now the Court has issued its ruling: signatures are part of the public record. "By a strong majority Thursday, the Supreme Court issued a setback for opponents of gay marriage who wanted to keep their identities secret. The justices favored transparency over privacy in a case testing whether signing a petition is a public act. The case began with a bill that the Washington state legislature passed in 2009, expanding the state's domestic partnership law. The new referendum was known as 'everything but marriage' for the enhanced rights it gave same-sex couples. People who opposed the bill gathered 120,000 signatures for a ballot measure asking voters to repeal it. That measure eventually reached Washington voters, who upheld 'everything but marriage.' Those who signed the repeal petition feared that they would be harassed if their names became public, so they went to court challenging Washington's Public Records Act. They argued that signing a petition is speech that is protected from disclosure. But in Thursday's 8-1 ruling, the Supreme Court disagreed. 'Such disclosure does not, as a general matter, violate the first amendment,' Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court."
I think it should be expected that if you sign a petition, the information is public. Otherwise, there would be no way to validate the petition. The constitution protects free speech, although not necessarily ANONYMOUS free speech. There are other avenues for anonymous free speech anyway.
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Shouldn't the same be true about voting?
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
I think the best way to imagine this is to contemplate the consequences of anonymous petitions. Without the signatures and names being public record, I could pretty much create a petition for anything with any number of signatures you can imagine. With ballot box voting, we've at least done some due diligence on the qualifications of those who get to drop ballots into the box, even if their choices are anonymous, their identities are not.
My personal opinion is that a petition should be independently verifiable as to its validity (to make sure there is no petition stuffing going on), and the only way to do that is to make signatory information available to those independent verifiers - and anyone should be able to be an independent verifier.
Otherwise the petition isn't worth anything.
True. I mean, the whole point of adding your name to a petition is, well, adding your name. Petition without names aren't worth the "paper" it's written on, like those stupid email petition spam.
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Cowards. If you are willing to put your name on a petition to get a measure on the ballot, then you should be willing to stand by your decision. Claiming you don't want your name to be revealed because your friends and neighbors might think differently about you is no excuse to try and hide from your decision.
It's always funny when those who try to wrap themselves in the veils of freedom and democracy are generally the first ones who don't want others to know what they're up to.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The SCOTUS pointed out that there are exceptions, and the lawyer for the petitioners stated that he believes their case falls in the realm of those exceptions. So it'll go back to a lower court to determine if it within them.
It strikes me as odd though. I thought the whole point of signing a petition was to publicly announce your support for the petition. I mean, if you don't feel strongly enough to write your name publicly, why not just write Mickey Mouse? And hell, if there is going to be no public scrutiny of who is brave enough to actually back the petition, what's to keep the petitioner from just writing Mickey Mouse 120,000 times.
There SHOULD be an element of risk to signing a petition. You have to be willing to put your name on the line, literally. That includes showing support for the issue, and dealing with people who may disagree with you.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I know you're being sarcastic, but it's disgusting how these people are afraid of how others might perceive them, when in fact going 'on record' with dangerous opinions is the very foundation of civic society in the United States. The founders signed their own death warrants with the words "[...] we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." How these cowards could learn from their example.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Ballots themselves are a matter of public record, it's just the identity of the person who filled it out that is secret.
A petition is quite a different thing and serves a different purpose. If the names on it cannot be verified, there's nothing to say that the people represented actually signed it.
The people who signed the petition wish to strongly curtail the legal rights of other people but want to do so anonymously? No good can come of that!
Not in this specific example. The gay community isn't exactly going out of its way to violently oppress those who oppose it, while the other side can't say the same. In fact, I'd be surprised if this were anything more than the traditional belief that "since they should fear retribution from me, I should fear equivalent retribution from them." It's a pretty common belief among modern social conservatives.
They need to apply the law to all parts of the government, all information regarding our government should be public unless it is classified. No more meetings behind closed doors hiding the deceit from the public. If our representatives knew that their actions were being recorded the ethics of our representatives would go through the roof.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
What an unsurprising response, an anonymous coward who doesn't have the depth of conviction to stand for his principles. The founders faced the specter of the hangman's noose for treason against the crown of England, but somebody might scratch up your car in your driveway, so you sure as hell can't take a stand... too risky.
I'm glad this country wasn't full of cowards like you in the 18th century.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
> The gay community isn't exactly going out of its way to violently oppress those who oppose
> it, while the other side can't say the same.
That depends on where you live and how you define "gay community". In California during the Proposition 8 debates and right after its passage there was quite a number of rather ugly incidents.
http://www.christianexaminer.com/Articles/Articles%20Dec08/Art_Dec08_09.html lists a few; I'm not sure how you can view spray-painting buildings belonging to particular religious groups, punching your neighbors in the face, putting up "bigots live here" signage, etc as something other than "violent oppression". Of course you may be affected by your dislike for the targets of said oppression, but consider how we would view people spray-painting signs saying "Jews live here", say?
Now clearly only a small fraction of the "gay community" is involved in such acts. On the other hand, only a small fraction of opponents of gay marriage, say, is involved in violent acts. Neither is acceptable, and both are violent oppression in any meaningful sense of the word.
All of which comes down to the fact that any group that feels like it's in their power (either due to being a majority group or due to special protections from the government like the aristocracy in medieval Europe) will tend to violently oppress people it doesn't like. I wish it weren't so, but history and current events suggest that it is. What we should strive for is minimizing such incidents as much as we can, and NOT through making people shut up and conform.
If you're not strong enough in your convictions to be willing to stand up and face the consequences of supporting them, maybe there's a reason you shouldn't be supporting them. While I don't agree with death threats and the like, if you're going to campaign to take away other peoples' rights, you damn well better do it publicly and in full view of everyone else (which includes knowing who you are).
If the government tried to take away your rights in secret, you'd be up in arms about that. Just look at /.'s reaction to ACTA. Well, in case you hadn't noticed, petitions are the peoples' way of acting as the government - thus they too should be transparent and not allow for "shadowy masses" to make the rules.
Also, if someone's truly a wacko who's going to cause problems for you for signing a petition, I've got news for you - they're going to cause trouble whether or not you sign the petition; maybe to someone else instead, but again, that's where the strength of your convictions comes in. It all comes back to that - stand up and announce your position to the world, or SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP!
Wait, I don't follow. Why would a closeted gay sign a petition against gay marriage if no one could verify that he'd done it? I mean, I can see why a closeted gay would sign such a petition if the names were going to go public. If anything, the closeted gay would want the names to go public as evidence that he's not a gay sympathizer.
This is not about gays not wanting to be outed as gays. This is about bigots not wanting to be outed as bigots.
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