[pp.int.general] 120 Days Left for Utah in the USA

[Ray Jenson]

Juxi Leitner wrote:
> I have to agree with Rick, getting the signatures by hand is a pain in
> the ass we had to try to that last year here in Austria, it's easier
> to get the support online, much easier :) (how do they check if the
> signatures are from Utah?)

Here in Utah, the privacy laws are such that they openly ask for a
person's home address. Using this method, each signature is considered
valid if the address matches the voter registration form, and if it
doesn't, then the SECONDARY match is the signature. The other option is
to use the social number, which is considered even more private, yet
which almost anyone will tell you if you ask them for it, almost without
thinking about it. It's a dangerous state of affairs, and I'm just now
beginning to understand the depth of the problem.

Two months ago, when I began to collect signatures, about one in three
people asked if I needed more information to validate. I think I should
have been happy enough getting their personal address information,
especially a couple of those cute college girls, but people here tend to
think the government really needs a high level of information to
validate and verify each voter. Since we're more like 50 independent
countries than we are one country with 50 districts, the voting rules
change from state to state, and Utah's level of information is actually
considered minimal.

What I don't understand is why the signature validation is secondary to
the address information. Political party declarations are not kept
private from the government, and so they are the only ones who can
really determine the validity or not. It's by design, I'm sure, but what
is the purpose? I wish I knew.

> If u need more information about gathering the signatures by hand I
> can get u in contact with a few folks here in Austria who did that
> last year if u need it...
> 

No, though I thank you for the offer. I think my days of gathering them
by hand are soon over, and I'll only gather those when I'm at speaking
engagements. Speaking of which, I have my first one on November 10th at
about 11pm GMT and it runs for 2 hours at our local library (local time
in Utah will be 4pm). I'm rather nervous, as I don't know what I'm going
to say yet. I only know it will be good. :-)