Sign a petition, disclose your name?
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Los Angeles Times: When a citizen signs a petition to place an initiative on the ballot, is he or she acting as a voter or as a legislator?
How the Supreme Court answers that question will determine whether states can make the names of signers public. It's a close call, but the court should decide in favor of disclosure.
In a sequence of events reminiscent of the battle over California's Proposition 8, opponents of gay rights in Washington state gathered enough signatures to force a referendum on overturning a generous domestic-partnership law. The initiative failed to pass, but controversy continues about whether the names of those who signed the ballot petitions should be released (and possibly posted on the Internet).
Unlike California, Washington treats petitions as public records accessible to all. But in October, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked release of the 138,500 names after Protect Marriage Washington filed suit, claiming among other things that disclosure would expose signers to scorn and harassment. (Proposition 8 proponents used a similar argument to persuade the Supreme Court to block the televising of the current trial over the constitutionality of that measure.) Now the court has announced that it will decide whether petition signers have a constitutional right to have their names kept secret.
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