Of course the actual abolition of valuable consideration in petition making might not altogether eliminate motives for fraudulent petition making, for frauds may be perpetrated in behalf of a cause.1

Opponents of the plan to do away with the payment of circulators consider that danger of fraud can be eliminated by the proper enforcement of the criminal law, especially in view of the recent provision which requires the circulator to swear that he is personally acquainted with every person who signs the petition.2

On the whole it would seem that as long as the circulation of petitions is permitted — substitutes have been proposed 3 — it would be unwise to prohibit the payment of the circulators.

4

The Methods of Circulators

Individual circulators may have charge of petitions for only one measure or for several measures. The tendency of "professional" circulation is toward the latter plan. Such combinations result from the support of more than one measure by the same parties, or from the independent employment of the same agents by the supporters of different measures; or the supporters of different measures unite and employ joint agents to circulate the petitions for the several measures together.

Signatures are solicited on the streets, from house to house, in stores and private offices, in saloons and other questionable places, in railroad stations, on trains, in public offices, at

1 Cf. Oregonian, Jan. 2, 1914, p. 10, col. 1.

2 W. S. U'Ren, quoted in Oregon Journal, Nov. 2, 1913, p. 2, col. 3. Below, pp. 74-7.

"Although a number of complaints have been made concerning petitioners who hang around at the very doors of the registration office in the court house, nothing has been done yet, while the petitioners are springing up like mushrooms. In the past week, each day, there has been another petitioner added to the little crowd collecting names, until now there are about a dozen through which women must pass before getting out of the court house. As a person comes out of the registration

church,1and other places where men do congregate. Often provision for signing petitions at designated places is made, and the supporters of the measure solicit signatures by advertisement in the newspapers or otherwise.

The fraudulent practices of hired circulators have recently caused more discussion in Oregon than any other matter concerning direct legislation, and have been the cause of most of the present agitation for changes in the initiative and referendum laws. How extensive such fraudulent practices have generally become it is impossible to say. There has been nothing like a thorough investigation of the petitions except in a few cases, but the fraud disclosed by such investigations creates a suspicion that very much more fraud remains undisclosed. Although in some cases circulators may have been imposed upon by forgers of signatures, apparently in most cases the circulators themselves have alone been guilty of fraud.

The fraudulent methods practiced in case of the referendum of the university appropriations of 1912 have been the most notorious. A statement of the fraud in that case, which is to office he or she is grabbed by the arm, a pencil is placed into his or her hand and before the victim knows what has happened a new name has been added to the petitions. Many women have complained to the registration clerks, some claiming that they had been insulted by those in charge of petitions. Complaint was made a few weeks ago about these same collectors using tables that had been left in the hall. When officials heard of this the tables were removed and the petitioners took up their station on the outside of the building. One by one the collectors went back into the building. From some place two tables appeared and now the name gatherers have the use of them. When the registration is slack the collectors make the rounds of the building seeking names. One of the most brazen of the name agents seized the opportunity a few days ago, walked into the registration office and asked each of the clerks in the office to affix their signatures to a petition. He got no names, however." Oregon Journal, Mar. 25, 1913, p. 11, col. 5. "By an order passed by the county commissioners yesterday in the future no petitions may be circulated in the corridors of the court house." Oregonian, Jan. 28, 1914, p. 1, col. 2.

1 "The best place to catch people for a petition of that kind [an initiative excise ordinance] is at churches on Sunday. I went up town one Sunday and stopped people going to and from church. Most of the men had their wives with them and almost had to sign when they saw what kind of a petition it was. I could fill a whole book with names on Sunday in that way." A. G. Ross, quoted in Oregonian, Apr. 26, 1909, p. 13, col. 1.

F

say the least, not overdrawn, appears in the decision of the circuit court. "It is charged in the complaint that some twentyfive different persons who circulated different parts of this petition, as the agents of H. J. Parkison, conspired and confederated together to corruptly make a spurious and false petition by the writing of fictitious names and addresses therein, and by forging the names of legal voters of this state; and that in pursuance thereof, the said conspirators did write into said petition large numbers of spurious names and forged the names of many legal voters of the state thereon; and by reason thereof all of the names in that part of the petition, verified by these several circulators, are spurious and void, and their affidavits false. The part of the petition thus challenged, includes about ten thousand names out of a total of thirteen thousand six hundred fifteen. Quite [a] proportion of these alleged fraudulent names go to make that part of the petition which is void as to its form. These charges of fraud and conspiracy made in the complaint are denied by the answer, and the plaintiff has the burden of proof as to that issue.

"As the taking of the testimony on this issue progressed at the trial, plaintiff made such a forcible and conclusive case of the alleged fraud to such a degree that defendant, by his counsel, voluntarily admitted in open court that names to the number of at least 3722 on this petition were and are fraudulent and void.

The public interest . . . demands that the full extent of the fraud, shown by the plaintiff's case, be considered and exposed to public view, to the end that the danger to public institutions may be appreciated and some corrective remedy applied by the legislative branch of the state government. Plaintiff's evidence, viewed in its entirety, challenges by testimony more or less persuasive, the integrity of over 6000 names on the petition other than those admitted by the defendant's counsel to be void. .

"Plaintiff has made its prima facie cause of fraud against the following parts of the petition . . . the whole aggregating some 6110 names, which do not include 3722 names admitted to be fraudulent. There is no reason why defendant's counsel

should have stopped in their admissions when they came to the work of Walter B. Thurber, for many pages of his part of the petition appear to be almost entirely made up of fraudulent and fictitious names. Section 61 is in part verified by Harry Goldman, whose other work in this petition amounting to 1100 names is admitted to be void for fraud. The work of C. L. Woolwein, who verified the remainder of that section, is scarcely an improvement on his associate. Sections 16, 59, and 112 by E. Wallace ought to be cast out if for no other reason than that it is admitted that his true name is E. J. Rahles, but there is shown to be fictitious and forged names therein, put therein by the said Rahles alias Wallace. Sections 31 and 105 verified by Charles Matthews are mostly forgeries upon the face of the petition without the aid of extrinsic or other evidence. The strongest evidence of the alleged fraud is the petition itself. The identity of the handwriting in the face of the petition with that in the affidavits convicts this circulator not only of fraud, but of falsifying his own oath upon the witness stand. . . . The defendant's expert witnesses gave testimony tending to show that many names in Matthews' petitions were written by one and the same hand. Besides many cases of specific proof of forged names in this part of the petition are shown, none of which has in any way been refuted by the defense. Many names have been judged to be bad or forgeries by the defendant's expert witnesses. The same comments may be made as to the work of F. M. Raymond, who, it appears, fled the state as soon as the investigation of this petition began. The report made by the defendant's expert witnesses and put in evidence shows that they examined 6753 names, and found only 2902 of that number registered, while 3525 of those not found registered reported as having no evidence in the appearance of the writing itself sufficient to say that they were fraudulent. 131 other names were catalogued as suspected of being fraudulent, and 195 were listed as fraudulent and void. Of these registered names, 1783 appear upon that part of the petition attacked by plaintiff's proof, and deducting

that number from the total of 9788 disqualified by plaintiff's evidence and by the defendant's admissions, leaves 8003 names as the total number affected by plaintiff's case, and not overcome by the defendant. Deducting this number from the total number on the petition, leaves but 5612 names which may be said to represent the valid part of the petition upon this view of the case. This does not take into account more than 200 names which on a careful computation ought to be deducted for duplication and for lack of proper verification by omitting a name from the affidavit or the failure of the circulator to sign the same." 1

Investigation of charges of such fraudulent practices is very expensive, and generally there have not been interests sufficiently affected by the proposed legislation to provide the necessary funds for the purpose.2

In addition to their forgery of signatures, circulators of petitions have sometimes been guilty of misrepresenting the nature of the measures included in the petitions.

In the case of at least one measure circulators of petitions have been bought off by opponents of the proposed legislation,3 and in another case a promise was made, with apparent power to make good the promise, to see that a referendum was dropped upon the payment of a stipulated sum."

1 Friendly v. Olcott, circuit court of Marion county, Eugene Register, Dec. 22, 1911, p. 3. See also especially Oregonian, Oct. 6, 1911, p. 16, col. 1; Oct. 10, 1911, p. 8, col. 2; Oregon Journal, Nov. 4, 1911, p. 16, col. 2. The supreme court was more conservative in its estimate of the amount of fraud. State v. Olcott, Oregon Reports, vol. 62, pp. 277, 284 (1912).

2 Cf. Oregonian, July 9, 1913, p. 8, col. 1. A county clerk of long experience testified in court that "he did not remember ever having checked a petition where all the names were good. In liquor license petitions, he said, usually about half are bad, and in nominating petitions about twenty per cent are bad." Oregon Journal, Nov. 21, 1911, p. 10, col. 1.

In this case of a local initiative ordinance, after the author of the measure discovered the sale of petitions, he expressly authorized trusted circulators to sell some petitions, and used the proceeds to circulate new petitions.

"His interest in the act at a later date culminated in his magnanimous offer to see that the referendum (which had been started) was dropped. He was willing to accomplish this if $1500 could be raised for the purpose. Since this couldn't be done he promised to undertake the matter for various other sums ranging from $1000