What we're doing
We are building an an online platform to simplify and democratize the process of collecting initiative petition signatures, by using social media, and crowdsourcing to replace canvassers with clipboards in front of supermarkets. Our goal is to build an online community of Massachusetts voters who want to be notified by email about a ballot initiative campaign on an issue they support and want to see passed into law, so they can sign the petition to put it on the ballot. As the inaugural issue to launch our platform, we chose a proposed law to suspend the gas tax in Massachusetts. If you would like to help us build this tool to democratize the ballot initiative process, please sign our first petition.
Why we're doing it
Activists in Massachusetts have been using the citizen initiative process for over 100 years to bring their proposed laws directly to the voters. But to get a law on the ballot, an initiative campaign must first collect over 75,000 signatures of Massachusetts voters on the Secretary of State’s official printed petition. Each signed petition must then be delivered to the signer’s local election department to verify that the signer is a registered voter. After the signatures are verified, they must be retrieved from each of the state’s 351 city and town election departments, and finally delivered to the Secretary of State, all in under 75 days. Six months later, the campaign must repeat the same process and collect another 13,000 signatures, this time in under 45 days.
To collect tens of thousands of signatures in just a few weeks, a campaign would need to recruit hundreds of volunteers and have them stand in a busy location or go door to door, asking people to sign their petition. This is beyond the organizing capabilities of most grassroots activists and advocacy organizations.
The alternative is to hire a professional signature drive firm with an army of paid petitioners to stand in front of supermarkets and other busy locations for eight to twelve hours a day with their clipboards, plus managers to help run these crews. This is beyond the financial resources of most grassroots activists or advocacy organizations.
Also, whether it’s a paid or volunteer drive, it’s necessary to collect a huge signature cushion, significantly above the required number, because even on a well-managed signature drive as many as 30% of the signatures are typically invalid. The signature may be illegible, or the signer moved and did not update their voter registration to their new address. Or the signer is not even registered to vote but wouldn’t admit that to the petitioner.
In Massachusetts, where the requirements are relatively easy compared to most other states, it still costs nearly a million dollars to hire a large enough crew of petitioners and managers full time for the two to three months it takes to collect enough signatures to put a question on the ballot. In states such as Michigan, Missouri or Ohio, where initiatives require close to half a million signatures, the project can last half a year and easily cost over $2 million. And in California and Florida, where you need close to a million signatures to get a question on the ballot, the cost is out of reach for even most well-funded organizations.
Being able to put a question on the ballot for people to vote on is a fundamental right in Massachusetts. This right should not be limited only to wealthy individuals, organizations or corporations. If activists propose a good idea for a law that then passes the Attorney General’s constitutional review and has genuine popular support, they should be able to put it on the ballot without first needing to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars or find a wealthy backer to pay for the same cumbersome and purposely archaic process for collecting signatures that has existed in its current form for over 100 years – a process that the institutional insiders won’t allow to be updated to take advantage of modern technology because they don’t want to make it easier for activists to go around them to put their own independent ideas for change on the ballot.
We created this platform to make it easy for a group of activists who have an idea for a new law to be able to put it in front of the voters on election day without needing to raise a million dollars to hire paid petitioners, or build a massive statewide volunteer signature drive organization with clipboards and walk lists and supermarket schedules, and then ask a completely random collection of voters walking past their storefront to sign their petition. Instead, they will just use our platform to submit their ballot initiative idea to our group of self-selected signers to see if enough are interested in signing a petition to support putting it on the ballot. And if there aren’t, we will continue growing our community of signers until there are enough.
How it works
The idea is simple. To receive a petition, each prospective signer will be asked to contribute $2.95 to cover the cost of processing their own signature. This includes printing and mailing you the petition packet; postage on the prepaid business reply envelope that we provide for you to mail the signed petition back to us; postage and courier costs for us to deliver all 88,000 signed petitions to the 351 Massachusetts city and town election departments for them to be registered and counted, and then for us to retrieve them and deliver them to the Massachusetts Secretary of State; plus hiring back office staff to help manage 88,000 printed petitions.
The total cost of this approach is much lower than for a conventional signature drive because using social media and the US postal service to collect a signature costs a lot less than paying a petitioner with clipboards to spend weeks standing in front of a supermarket. We will also need significantly fewer signatures because we won’t have to worry about a cushion to make up for signers whose signature is disqualified because they aren’t registered. We will be able to check signer’s registration status in advance and only send them a petition or count them in our total if they are registered to vote. And we’ll be able to print their name and address on the petition we send out next to the signature will go, so signatures won’t be disqualified because the election department can’t read the signer’s handwriting.
Our first step is to recruit 88,000 Massachusetts voters who will commit to signing our petition to suspend the gas tax. This will be a lot of work, but we only need to do it once. At the end of this first campaign, we will have activated a community of Massachusetts voters, that we will continue to add to from year to year, who will want to help get other common sense issues on the ballot in future elections.
So will you help launch this new tool to put common sense issues on the ballot? Do you want people to be able to vote to suspend the gas tax? Then please join us by filling in your contact information in the above web form so we can send you the official petition. If enough people agree to sign the petition and contribute just $2.95 each, we can put this issue on the ballot, and build this game changing platform for future citizen initiatives. And once this issue is on the ballot, you can help choose the next initiative you’d like to vote on.
How you can help
Donate $2.95 so we can send you the petition. Then get every voter in your household to sign.
Like and follow us on Facebook and Twitter, so you’ll automatically see our updates as soon as we post them.
Share this web site on all of your social media platforms, so all of your friends can see and share it.
Like and share our social media posts, so they’ll appear on your feeds for your friends to see and share.
Email your friends and tell them about us. Include a link to https://Sign2SuspendTheGasTax.org
Even if you’re not a Massachusetts voter and can’t sign the petition, you probably know people who are Massachusetts voters. So no matter where in the country you are, share us with your friends! And after we’re on the ballot in Massachusetts, we can begin recruiting signers to put the initiative on the ballot in your state.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”
Margaret Mead
What we're doing
We are building an an online platform to simplify and democratize the process of collecting initiative petition signatures, by using social media, and crowdsourcing to replace canvassers with clipboards in front of supermarkets. Our goal is to build an online community of Massachusetts voters who want to be notified by email about a ballot initiative campaign on an issue they support and want to see passed into law, so they can sign the petition to put it on the ballot. As the inaugural issue to launch our platform, we chose a proposed law to suspend the gas tax in Massachusetts. If you would like to help us build this tool to democratize the ballot initiative process, please sign our first petition.
Why we're doing it
Activists in Massachusetts have been using the citizen initiative process for over 100 years to bring their proposed laws directly to the voters. But to get a law on the ballot, an initiative campaign must first collect over 75,000 signatures of Massachusetts voters on the Secretary of State’s official printed petition. Each signed petition must then be delivered to the signer’s local election department to verify that the signer is a registered voter. After the signatures are verified, they must be retrieved from each of the state’s 351 city and town election departments, and finally delivered to the Secretary of State, all in under 75 days. Six months later, the campaign must repeat the same process and collect another 13,000 signatures, this time in under 45 days.
To collect tens of thousands of signatures in just a few weeks, a campaign would need to recruit hundreds of volunteers and have them stand in a busy location or go door to door, asking people to sign their petition. This is beyond the organizing capabilities of most grassroots activists and advocacy organizations.
The alternative is to hire a professional signature drive firm with an army of paid petitioners to stand in front of supermarkets and other busy locations for eight to twelve hours a day with their clipboards, plus managers to help run these crews. This is beyond the financial resources of most grassroots activists or advocacy organizations.
Also, whether it’s a paid or volunteer drive, it’s necessary to collect a huge signature cushion, significantly above the required number, because even on a well-managed signature drive as many as 30% of the signatures are typically invalid. The signature may be illegible, or the signer moved and did not update their voter registration to their new address. Or the signer is not even registered to vote but wouldn’t admit that to the petitioner.
In Massachusetts, where the requirements are relatively easy compared to most other states, it still costs nearly a million dollars to hire a large enough crew of petitioners and managers full time for the two to three months it takes to collect enough signatures to put a question on the ballot. In states such as Michigan, Missouri or Ohio, where initiatives require close to half a million signatures, the project can last half a year and easily cost over $2 million. And in California and Florida, where you need close to a million signatures to get a question on the ballot, the cost is out of reach for even most well-funded organizations.
Being able to put a question on the ballot for people to vote on is a fundamental right in Massachusetts. This right should not be limited only to wealthy individuals, organizations or corporations. If activists propose a good idea for a law that then passes the Attorney General’s constitutional review and has genuine popular support, they should be able to put it on the ballot without first needing to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars or find a wealthy backer to pay for the same cumbersome and purposely archaic process for collecting signatures that has existed in its current form for over 100 years – a process that the institutional insiders won’t allow to be updated to take advantage of modern technology because they don’t want to make it easier for activists to go around them to put their own independent ideas for change on the ballot.
We created this platform to make it easy for a group of activists who have an idea for a new law to be able to put it in front of the voters on election day without needing to raise a million dollars to hire paid petitioners, or build a massive statewide volunteer signature drive organization with clipboards and walk lists and supermarket schedules, and then ask a completely random collection of voters walking past their storefront to sign their petition. Instead, they will just use our platform to submit their ballot initiative idea to our group of self-selected signers to see if enough are interested in signing a petition to support putting it on the ballot. And if there aren’t, we will continue growing our community of signers until there are enough.
How it works
The idea is simple. To receive a petition, each prospective signer will be asked to contribute $2.95 to cover the cost of processing their own signature. This includes printing and mailing you the petition packet; postage on the prepaid business reply envelope that we provide for you to mail the signed petition back to us; postage and courier costs for us to deliver all 88,000 signed petitions to the 351 Massachusetts city and town election departments for them to be registered and counted, and then for us to retrieve them and deliver them to the Massachusetts Secretary of State; plus hiring back office staff to help manage 88,000 printed petitions.
The total cost of this approach is much lower than for a conventional signature drive because using social media and the US postal service to collect a signature costs a lot less than paying a petitioner with clipboards to spend weeks standing in front of a supermarket. We will also need significantly fewer signatures because we won’t have to worry about a cushion to make up for signers whose signature is disqualified because they aren’t registered. We will be able to check signer’s registration status in advance and only send them a petition or count them in our total if they are registered to vote. And we’ll be able to print their name and address on the petition we send out next to the signature will go, so signatures won’t be disqualified because the election department can’t read the signer’s handwriting.
Our first step is to recruit 88,000 Massachusetts voters who will commit to signing our petition to suspend the gas tax. This will be a lot of work, but we only need to do it once. At the end of this first campaign, we will have activated a community of Massachusetts voters who will want to help get other common sense issues on the ballot in future election cycles.
So will you help launch this new tool to put common sense issues on the ballot? Do you want people to be able to vote to suspend the gas tax? Then please join us by filling in your contact information in the above web form so we can send you the official petition. If enough people agree to sign the petition and contribute just $2.95 each, we can put this issue on the ballot, and build this game changing platform for future citizen initiatives. And once this issue is on the ballot, you can help choose the next initiative you’d like to vote on.
How you can help
Donate $2.95 so we can send you the petition. Then get every voter in your household to sign.
Like and follow us on Facebook and Twitter, so you’ll automatically see our updates as soon as we post them.
Share this web site on all of your social media platforms, so all of your friends can see and share it.
Like and share our social media posts, so they’ll appear on your feeds for your friends to see and share.
Email your friends and tell them about us. Include a link to https://Sign2SuspendTheGasTax.org
Even if you’re not a Massachusetts voter and can’t sign the petition, you probably know people who are Massachusetts voters. So no matter where in the country you are, share us with your friends! And after we’re on the ballot in Massachusetts, we can begin recruiting signers to put the initiative on the ballot in your state.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”
Margaret Mead
What we're doing
We are building an an online platform to simplify and democratize the process of collecting initiative petition signatures, by using social media, and crowdsourcing to replace canvassers with clipboards in front of supermarkets. Our goal is to build an online community of Massachusetts voters who want to be notified by email about a ballot initiative campaign on an issue they support and want to see passed into law, so they can sign the petition to put it on the ballot. As the inaugural issue to launch our platform, we chose a proposed law to suspend the gas tax in Massachusetts. If you would like to help us build this tool to democratize the ballot initiative process, please sign our first petition.
Why we're doing it
Activists in Massachusetts have been using the citizen initiative process for over 100 years to bring their proposed laws directly to the voters. But to get a law on the ballot, an initiative campaign must first collect over 75,000 signatures of Massachusetts voters on the Secretary of State’s official printed petition. Each signed petition must then be delivered to the signer’s local election department to verify that the signer is a registered voter. After the signatures are verified, they must be retrieved from each of the state’s 351 city and town election departments, and finally delivered to the Secretary of State, all in under 75 days. Six months later, the campaign must repeat the same process and collect another 13,000 signatures, this time in under 45 days.
To collect tens of thousands of signatures in just a few weeks, a campaign would need to recruit hundreds of volunteers and have them stand in a busy location or go door to door, asking people to sign their petition. This is beyond the organizing capabilities of most grassroots activists and advocacy organizations.
The alternative is to hire a professional signature drive firm with an army of paid petitioners to stand in front of supermarkets and other busy locations for eight to twelve hours a day with their clipboards, plus managers to help run these crews. This is beyond the financial resources of most grassroots activists or advocacy organizations.
Also, whether it’s a paid or volunteer drive, it’s necessary to collect a huge signature cushion, significantly above the required number, because even on a well-managed signature drive as many as 30% of the signatures are typically invalid. The signature may be illegible, or the signer moved and did not update their voter registration to their new address. Or the signer is not even registered to vote but wouldn’t admit that to the petitioner.
In Massachusetts, where the requirements are relatively easy compared to most other states, it still costs nearly a million dollars to hire a large enough crew of petitioners and managers full time for the two to three months it takes to collect enough signatures to put a question on the ballot. In states such as Michigan, Missouri or Ohio, where initiatives require close to half a million signatures, the project can last half a year and easily cost over $2 million. And in California and Florida, where you need close to a million signatures to get a question on the ballot, the cost is out of reach for even most well-funded organizations.
Being able to put a question on the ballot for people to vote on is a fundamental right in Massachusetts. This right should not be limited only to wealthy individuals, organizations or corporations. If activists propose a good idea for a law that then passes the Attorney General’s constitutional review and has genuine popular support, they should be able to put it on the ballot without first needing to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars or find a wealthy backer to pay for the same cumbersome and purposely archaic process for collecting signatures that has existed in its current form for over 100 years – a process that the institutional insiders won’t allow to be updated to take advantage of modern technology because they don’t want to make it easier for activists to go around them to put their own independent ideas for change on the ballot.
We created this platform to make it easy for a group of activists who have an idea for a new law to be able to put it in front of the voters on election day without needing to raise a million dollars to hire paid petitioners, or build a massive statewide volunteer signature drive organization with clipboards and walk lists and supermarket schedules, and then ask a completely random collection of voters walking past their storefront to sign their petition. Instead, they will just use our platform to submit their ballot initiative idea to our group of self-selected signers to see if enough are interested in signing a petition to support putting it on the ballot. And if there aren’t, we will continue growing our community of signers until there are enough.
How it works
The idea is simple. To receive a petition, each prospective signer will be asked to contribute $2.95 to cover the cost of processing their own signature. This includes printing and mailing you the petition packet; postage on the prepaid business reply envelope that we provide for you to mail the signed petition back to us; postage and courier costs for us to deliver all 88,000 signed petitions to the 351 Massachusetts city and town election departments for them to be registered and counted, and then for us to retrieve them and deliver them to the Massachusetts Secretary of State; plus hiring back office staff to help manage 88,000 printed petitions.
The total cost of this approach is much lower than for a conventional signature drive because using social media and the US postal service to collect a signature costs a lot less than paying a petitioner with clipboards to spend weeks standing in front of a supermarket. We will also need significantly fewer signatures because we won’t have to worry about a cushion to make up for signers whose signature is disqualified because they aren’t registered. We will be able to check signer’s registration status in advance and only send them a petition or count them in our total if they are registered to vote. And we’ll be able to print their name and address on the petition we send out next to the signature will go, so signatures won’t be disqualified because the election department can’t read the signer’s handwriting.
Our first step is to recruit 88,000 Massachusetts voters who will commit to signing our petition to suspend the gas tax. This will be a lot of work, but we only need to do it once. At the end of this first campaign, we will have activated a community of Massachusetts voters who will want to help get other common sense issues on the ballot in future election cycles.
So will you help launch this new tool to put common sense issues on the ballot? Do you want people to be able to vote to suspend the gas tax? Then please join us by filling in your contact information in the above web form so we can send you the official petition. If enough people agree to sign the petition and contribute just $2.95 each, we can put this issue on the ballot, and build this game changing platform for future citizen initiatives. And once this issue is on the ballot, you can help choose the next initiative you’d like to vote on.
How you can help
- Donate $2.95 so we can send you the petition. Then get every voter in your household to sign.
Like and follow us on Facebook and Twitter, so you’ll automatically see our updates as soon as we post them.
Share this web site on all of your social media platforms, so all of your friends can see and share it.
Like and share our social media posts, so they’ll appear on your feeds for your friends to see and share.
Email your friends and tell them about us. Include a link to https://Sign2SuspendTheGasTax.org
Even if you’re not a Massachusetts voter and can’t sign the petition, you probably know people who are Massachusetts voters. So no matter where in the country you are, share us with your friends! And after we’re on the ballot in Massachusetts, we can begin recruiting signers to put the initiative on the ballot in your state.