My ambivalence over the whole idea of ballot initiatives aside, there is something I don't get: why we don't have a process to sign any petition online. It's been tried, but it doesn't seem to have gone anywhere. There has been no information added to that webpage since 2010, so I presume it fell through. The idea, however, is so sound that it's unbelievable. In order to get enough signatures for a petition, you need paid signature gatherers. This will set you back a few million dollars. If an initiative lacks that cash, it won't be getting on the ballot. That's what just killed marijuana legalization in Cali for 2014. Furthermore, even if you have signature collectors, they can't cover every location, so those inclined to sign a petition may not have access to it. There are a couple right now I would sign that I can't get my hands on, because I can't find where the signature gatherers are, and certainly cannot skip school to ride the bus line around Silicon Valley in vague hopes of finding one. Even if I did, chances are I would fail to recognize that person as the signature collector I was searching for.
Online signatures provide a handy solution to this problem. As soon as someone hears about the existence of a petition they want to sign, they can pull out a smart phone or tablet and sign it right in the comfort of their own home. That's a few million a campaign doesn't need to spend on signature collectors, allowing them to make a run with a lower budget. Security wise it isn't any different at all from hand signing a petition. It's certainly not a perfect solution, because they still need to be able to afford advertising revenue and will probably get totally drowned out ad-wise if they go up against anyone with actual money, and a lot of people don't have smart phones or tablets, but it's better than what we have now. Might as well take whatever improvement we can get, right?
I'm talking about petitions as defined by California State Law, which go on the ballot if they receive sufficient signatures.