02/01/12: Sign that petition, please

This op-ed appeared in The Virginian-Pilot on the date shown.

LAST WEEK, I signed a petition to place the question of whether to switch to an elected school board on the ballot in Norfolk.

I signed for the same reason that I sign petitions for candidates to appear on the ballot: I believe the people should have the right to choose.

Signing a petition for something to appear on a ballot, whether it be an initiative or a person, is not the same as advocating for it. Advocacy petitions, which have grown in popularity in recent years, carry no real weight and are designed to persuade.

One of the more visible advocacy petition drives in recent memory urged Virginia lawmakers to overturn the so-called abuser fees, which were applied to a number of traffic violations.

The online petition garnered more than 177,000 signatures and helped convince the General Assembly to repeal the fees. But the petitions themselves could not place on the ballot a question of whether to repeal the fees.

The state code provides few instances for people to place something on the ballot via petition. One of them is candidates. Virginia’s rules for placing the names of candidates on the ballot have been discussed ad nauseam after some Republican presidential candidates failed to secure enough signatures to appear on the upcoming primary ballot.

Many have decried as onerous Virginia’s requirement for the candidates to obtain 10,000 signatures from across the state.

But compare that signature requirement with what’s necessary to put the question of an elected school board on the ballot, and you’ll get a better sense of which is onerous. There are more than 5 million registered voters in Virginia; 10,000 signatures represents just 0.2 percent of the total.

As of December 2011, there were 118,651 registered voters in Norfolk. If we applied the same standard — 0.2 percent — only 237 signatures would be needed to put the school board question on the ballot.

That’s nearly double the 125 signatures required from candidates to run for the House of Delegates or citywide, and it’s close to the 250 signatures needed by candidates for the state Senate.

But that’s not the total required for a ballot initiative. The requirement is 10 percent of registered voters, or 11,865 signatures in Norfolk.

In reality, more will be needed because sometimes people sign more than once and sometimes people sign even though they aren’t registered voters. These points and others were made in the State Board of Elections memo to presidential candidates, along with the recommendation that they collect at least 15,000 signatures rather than just the 10,000 required.

It should be no surprise, then, that previous efforts to gather enough signatures to put the question of an elected school board on the ballot in Norfolk have failed.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Whether you favor an elected board over the current appointed board isn’t the issue right now. Affixing your signature on the petition demonstrates neither support or opposition. It says only that you agree that the question should appear on the ballot.

I believe it is time to settle this question in Norfolk. And the only way to do so is to put it on the ballot and let the voters decide. I’m willing to abide by the will of the people. Are you?