As expected, the public employee unions defending the legislature's tax increases against a referendum drive have attacked the character of the petitioners. They checked and found that some of the paid petitioners against the tax hike had criminal records, mostly many years old, according to a report in the Portland Oregonian. And they warned voters about giving their names and addresses to people such as these.

This approach to campaigning may be shabby, but it's how electoral politics in Oregon works these days.

The initiative and referendum in Oregon are dead in the water without paid petitioners. With the economy and other concerns, most Oregon citizens these days have enough to worry about without going door to door gathering signatures on petitions.

Obtaining petition signatures is hard and dirty work. And it may be the one of the few kinds of honest work that people with a criminal history can get.

The legislature has put new restrictions on the petitioning process under the pretext of cleaning it up and protecting its integrity. The actual result is that the right to refer and initiate legislation has been pretty much taken out of average citizens' hands.

The legislature could both restore the right and keep it clean by authorizing online petitioning. But it won't do that, even though it should be technically possible. (People who trust their back accounts to online transactions should not be afraid to use the same process to verify a voter's identity.)

Online petitioning would put too much power in the hands of masses of people, and most people in the Capitol would not like the result.

So we are stuck with the appearance of the initiative and referendum being among the rights of the voters. But in reality those rights belong to a few well-funded pressure groups who can afford to hire employees to go gather names. (hh)