This is the second part of our reply to attacks on Paul Jacob by the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center (BISC), which opposes the exercise of the right of initiative and referendum except insofar as it can be deployed in the service of their left-wing political agenda. (For the first part, click here.) To obstruct legitimate petition drives, BISC promotes the use of bullying and intimidation or “blocking” against peaceful signature-gathering efforts. To support Attorney General Drew Edmondson’s indefensible attempt to imprison Paul Jacob, Susan Johnson and Rick Carpenter for their participation in a 1995 Oklahoma petition, BISC does violence to logic and common sense.

WHAT BISC SAYS: The truth is, Jacob has worked in this arena [of state petition drives] long enough to know the states’ laws. He just thought they could get away with ignoring them.

ANSWER: Who is ignoring what? The folks at BISC must be aware that Paul has defended himself, Johnson, and Carpenter in comprehensive detail against the charge that they willfully flouted rules governing the petition process in Oklahoma. BISC must be aware that that the managers of the drive made good-faith efforts to ascertain the relevance for the 1995 petition drive of Oklahoma’s residency requirement for petition circulators. Paul reports:

In response to all the harassment, many Oklahoma petitioners left the state to petition in other states. Given the difficult environment, not enough new circulators were being recruited and retained in Oklahoma to enable the petition to reach the ballot. Under such circumstances—and under the legislature’s (not the constitution’s) draconian 90-day petition window—I suggested to the petition company that the drive be scuttled.

I was then informed that under Oklahoma’s statutory residency requirement, people could move to Oklahoma and immediately declare residency, and thus be qualified to circulate the petition. The petition company felt enough people could be recruited to move to Oklahoma to gather enough signatures to bring the question to the ballot.

When I inquired as to whether the state officials had been asked for their guidelines on what constitutes residency, I was told that the petition company had indeed sought—and received—the advice and approval of officials in the Secretary of State’s office. Indeed, two separate individuals with National Voter Outreach spoke to government officials to determine the rules on residency. They were told that people could indeed come to Oklahoma, declare residency, and begin circulating a petition.

In good faith, the company acted on this information.

I also asked the folks at National Voter Outreach whether there had been any challenges of petition drives on the basis of residency, and whether any ruling on same had been issued by the Oklahoma Supreme Court. I received a copy of the court’s decision in a challenge to an initiative to ban cock-fighting. In that decision, circulators were challenged for being “out-of-state” circulators because they had moved to Oklahoma during the petition drive and because many lived in hotels during their residence in the state. According to the information I received, every circulator in the cock-fighting ban petition who declared him or herself a resident was ruled to be qualified to circulate the petition, regardless of how long he resided in the state or whether he lived in a hotel. The only circulator disqualified had listed an out-of-state address on the petition form.

Dishonestly, BISC does not even acknowledge Paul’s account, let alone treat it in any detail. What Paul provides is obviously the history of an effort to attend to, not “ignore,” the state’s regulations governing petition drives. (Click here to read Paul’s full statement.) Ex post facto, of course—i.e., after the 2005 petition drive was over and done—what constitutes “residency” was judicially invested with a perverse ad hoc meaning that would be countenanced by no landlord or tax collector or elections supervisor. The Oklahoma Three are facing years in prison for failing to divine how the law would be re-interpreted after the 2005 petition was over.

The indictment of the Oklahoma Three is politically motivated. There is at least one double standard apparent in it, i.e., the fact that Edmondson is prosecuting managers of a petition drive for which he harbors an ideological animus even as he has abstained from any assault on equally “guilty” managers of a recent initiative to ban cock-fighting in Oklahoma. A Wall Street Journal editorial notes that a second double standard can also be detected operating in the case. Because for some reason, “it is perfectly legal for opponents of a petition to solicit money and manpower from out-of-state. And sure enough, public sector unions opposed to the [1995 TABOR] initiative recruited people from outfits like the Oregon-based Voter Education Project, an offshoot of the AFL-CIO that specializes in countering signature drives. They also set up Web sites that advertised the location of signature-gathers and urged their members to harass them.”

But wait, there’s more:

After the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled, Attorney General Edmondson could have let the matter die. Instead, he decided that the best use of scarce prosecutorial resources was to indict the petition campaigners. There’s reason to believe his decision has less to do with enforcing the law and more to do with warning activists to think twice before challenging political elites….

The Democratic AG has denied that his actions are politically motivated, telling reporters that “we’re charged with enforcing the laws that are on the books.” But every prosecutor has to make judgment calls about how to deploy limited manpower. And in other areas, Mr. Edmondson has opted not to act while legal challenges are pending. Upon learning that the Supreme Court had agreed to review a challenge to the death penalty, for example, he recently requested that all executions be halted until the High Court speaks.

Okay, make that three. Edmondson’s unwillingness to abstain from his unjust prosecution of the Oklahoma Three at least while a legal challenge of the unconstitutional underlying law was still in progress is a third double standard implicit in this travesty. Not that he should be prosecuting persons innocent of any crime even if he were completely consistent in his injustice.

WHAT BISC SAYS: Through our research and tracking of signature gathering fraud over the past four years, BISC has found that most conservative ballot initiative players operate with little disregard [sic] for state laws that are meant to ensure an open and honest process of putting issues on the ballot.

ANSWER: Er, through our own research and tracking of BISC’s literary capabilities, we’ve found that they don’t know what “little disregard” means. (We’ve saved a screen shot of the goof, just in case BISC webmasteringly tries to shunt it into the memory hole.) Since “little disregard” is a different way of saying “much regard,” we can only applaud BISC’s brief if inadvertent lapse into fairness. We also note, though, the instant reversion to type represented by the immediately ensuing claim that arbitrary restrictions on the petition process intended to curdle the exercise of petition rights are actually “meant to ensure an open and honest process of putting issues on the ballot.”

WHAT BISC SAYS: Here are more examples of Paul Jacob’s misdeeds and fraudulent practices… While serving as president of U.S. Term Limits, [in 1994] Jacob managed several signature drives aimed at placing term limits on the ballot. Nebraska, North Dakota, Utah and Oklahoma all launched criminal investigations to determine whether fraudulent signatures were submitted. (”Fraud Charges Hit Term Limits Crusade.” Roll Call, September 22, 1994.) 

ANSWER: While Paul did work with and advise state term-limit groups, he did not manage any of these petition drives. BISC is simply inventing a fiction to fit this particular smear. 
Notice also that the results of these “investigations” of some 14 years ago aren’t supplied by BISC. So what happened? Well, first of all, these investigations were not investigations of U.S. Term Limits or of Paul Jacob. No one charged Paul with any misdeeds. These were investigations of individual petitioners in those states. The results? One petitioner was found to have forged signatures in Utah. This same petitioner was never charged in Oklahoma. An employee working for U.S. Term Limits in North Dakota was let go after that petition drive, though no one was prosecuted for any wrongdoing there. And no wrong-doing found in Nebraska.

WHAT BISC SAYS: When confronted with the evidence of fraudulent signature gathering in multiple states, Jacob dismissed the complaints, insisting that U.S. Term Limits was “merely doing what was necessary to put term limits on state ballots.” (”Fraud Charges Hit Term Limits Crusade.” Roll Call, September 22, 1994.)

ANSWER: This sounds like BISC is providing a quote from Paul, doesn’t it? It is not. It is the unwarranted assertion of a reporter for the insider congressional newspaper, Roll Call. Here’s what Paul actually said, “We want them to do the right thing. I think in the future we will probably have more of an auditing effort because we want to be even more careful that there aren’t forged signatures.”
 
WHAT BISC SAYS: After submitting signatures to qualify term limits for the ballot in North Dakota [in 1994], Secretary of State Al Jaeger received tips that U.S. Term Limits had employed out-of-state signature gatherers, a direct violation of North Dakota law. After launching an investigation, Jaeger discovered at least eight circulators who “fully acknowledged” they had been “contacted by U.S. Term Limits” and asked to falsely sign the petitions, although out-of-state actors had done the actual circulating. Some of them, Jaeger said, “had just been duped. They were offered $50–and for some of these people $50 is a lot of money–and asked to go to a notary public” and falsely swear they had done the circulating. At least two of them were local Libertarians, Jaeger said, who were not paid. (”Fraud Charges Hit Term Limits Crusade.” Roll Call, September 22, 1994) 

ANSWER: BISC omits the inconvenient fact that no U.S. Term Limits employee was ever charged with any wrongdoing in North Dakota. Nor was Paul Jacob, of course. Senior officers of U.S. Term Limits learned the accusations at the same time the State of North Dakota did. Paul noted at the time that he did not approve of the way the North Dakota drive was run and U.S. Term Limits employee who had worked directly on the drive subsequently lost his job, although without having admitted any wrongdoing.
 
WHAT BISC SAYS: The day after the [Oklahoma] term-limits measure was approved [in 1994], the Oklahoma Attorney General launched an investigation into the signature drive when it was revealed that the name of a state Supreme Court justice had been forged onto the petition. Additionally, the same circulator submitted the name of a seven year old and a gentleman who had been dead for over a decade. (”Fraud Charges Hit Term Limits Crusade.” Roll Call, September 22, 1994.) 

ANSWER: This is pretty silly; i.e. the idea that when a petitioner does something wrong anywhere in America, it must be the fault of Paul Jacob or perhaps of anyone who supports the right of direct democracy.

Here’s the guilt-by-association syllogism BISC is deploying here: The circulator accused of forging a signature worked for a company employed by the state campaign that received funding and advice from U.S. Term Limits. Paul worked for U.S. Term Limits. “Therefore,” per BISC, the conduct of the petitioner is all Paul’s fault. Paul in fact urged the State of Oklahoma to prosecute the individual alleged to have forged petition signatures, but the State of Oklahoma chose not to prosecute. Nevertheless, opponents of U.S. Term Limits still seek to use this case to smear USTL, which did nothing wrong.
 
WHAT BISC SAYS: Oklahoma’s multi-county grand jury indicted Susan Johnson president of [National Voter Outreach], Richard Carpenter of Oklahomans in Action, and Paul Jacob (who was working with Oklahomans in Action on the campaign) for their involvement in the 2005 petition drive to put a Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) initiative on the ballot. They were charged for conspiracy to defraud voters by hiring out-of-state signature gatherers when Oklahoma law mandates that petitioners must be residents of the state. This indictment was dismissed due to a legal technicality; however, Oklahoma Attorney General issued a re-indictment. Pending an appeal, the maximum punishment on the conspiracy count is 10 years in prison and a $25,000 fine. (”Grand jury indicts three over signature gathering.” The Oklahoman. October 3, 2007) 

ANSWER: BISC declares Paul a “fraud merchant” because he has been wrongfully indicted in a ridiculous, politically-motivated, anti-First Amendment case in Oklahoma—in response to which Paul has pled not guilty and in response to which he has provided a detailed explanation of the shoddiness and fraudulence of Edmondson’s claims. All the other so-called “examples” have little if anything to do with Paul and amount to the usual BISCquicking of the facts: lots of twisted blather, but nothing both credible and on point. To decent Americans, it is merely a testament to Paul’s tremendous impact on the cause of advancing freedom that those who hate liberty are so hell-bent on putting him out of commission, by any means necessary.