The Ralph Nader effect: Alaska drops fight against nonresident signature gatherers

The Alaska political activists hoping to place health care, conservation and good government initiatives on next year's ballot scored a court victory this week, as state attorneys agreed to set aside a law banning nonresidents from gathering petition signatures.

The man who runs the state's leading signature-gathering business, Scott Kohlhaas, had challenged the law in federal court, saying it was unconstitutional. Kohlhaas wants to hire experienced nonresident signature gatherers to help collect the tens of thousands of signatures required for the initiatives to be approved for the 2018 ballot.

In an agreement signed with Kohlhaas' attorney, Ken Jacobus, Assistant Attorney General Elizabeth Bakalar cited a decade-old court ruling in which the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated an Arizona law analogous to Alaska's statute.

That 2008 ruling came in response to a 2004 lawsuit from Ralph Nader, the activist and consumer advocate who was then running for president as an independent.

The appeals court ruled that the Arizona's ban on nonresident signature gatherers imposed a "severe burden" on the speech, voting and associational rights of Nader and his supporters. While the state had a legitimate goal in preventing fraud, the ruling said, the residency standard wasn't "narrowly tailored" enough to be sustained.

The 9th Circuit also has jurisdiction over Alaska and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the case, making the 2008 decision "dispositive and controlling" over Kohlhaas' lawsuit, Bakalar and Jacobus wrote.

The ruling in Nader's case, Bakalar said in a phone interview Thursday, made the outcome of Kohlhaas' lawsuit a "foregone conclusion."

"We don't have the resources to put to litigation in which the writing is completely, 100 percent on the wall," Bakalar said. "We can't, under the federal Constitution, enforce this statute anymore."

The two sides filed their agreement Thursday and U.S. District Court Judge John Sedwick, who's overseeing case, approved it Friday.

Kohlhaas and an aspiring nonresident signature gatherer, Darryl Bonner, filed the lawsuit in September.

Kohlhaas' business is already collecting signatures for four citizens initiatives that could appear on next year's ballot — two that would enshrine aspects of the federal Affordable Care Act in state law, one to enhance salmon habitat protections and limit big development projects, and a fourth to tighten limits on state lawmakers' travel, daily expense payments and lobbyist-paid meals.

The signature-gathering operation is a big business, with the initiatives' supporters pledging to pay Kohlhaas nearly $600,000, in total, to help get their proposals on the ballot, according to campaign finance disclosures.

Kohlhaas, in a phone interview Thursday, said he's aiming to gather a total of 176,000 signatures over the next few months — 44,000 per initiative — to provide enough of a buffer over the 32,000 that the state requires for each. The ability to hire nonresident signature gatherers "means a lot to getting the job done," he said.

Kohlhaas said he hopes to bring between five and 10 nonresident signature gatherers to Alaska; they'd be a small fraction of the dozens he ultimately hopes to hire, he added, but those brought from Outside would be especially capable.

"These are going to be some of the best petitioners in the country," Kohlhaas said.

Kohlhaas' signature gatherers are currently working in Anchorage only, he said, though he plans to have others working soon in Ketchikan and the Mat-Su and on the Kenai Peninsula.