Farley Anderson

Farley Anderson

The following article was written by Farley Anderson, who is fighting a legal battle to get on the ballot to run for governor of Utah. The dispute is over the use of electronic signatures in the petition process.  The I-Sign process is an initiative of a group called  The People’s Right (www.utahlive.us). One of the stated objectives of this group is to “to lead the nation in a movement to raise the political power of people above that of political parties, special interest, media hype or money power through a direct process deliberately left open in the Utah State Constitution.”

For background on this dispute, see the following news articles:

Internet gathered E-signatures petitions may revolutionize politics if allowed to stand. A new frontier of Internet Political activism faces First Amendment challenge.

We need your support to help fight a Supreme Court battle.  We plan to use the power of the internet and innovation to make politics better, more open and user-friendly and more about what is right than what is in it for me.  Not everyone is pleased with us shaking the political applecart.

A grass roots movement in Utah seeks to open a whole new paradigm of citizen-powered political activity to give a new political choice to everyone.  Most people in our country are truly and justifiably disgusted with politics in general.  It has become way too much about who really wants the job and who can sell off enough influence to buy an election.  The Internet, more than any other tool, may have the power to return the power to our people and restore a system of equality and justice as promised in the lead paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence.  As newspaperman and first amendment advocate Edward Morrow put it, “A nation of sheep begets a government of wolves”.  Knowledge, with activity, raises a people above the blindness of the herd mentality.  The Independence project is a grass roots movement to utilize the power of free information via the internet to build a sense of political community and offer a change so refreshingly comfortable and new that it will catch the imagination of a sleeping people (see the movement website at utahlive.us).  Imagine a political system that is not run or controlled by money, a system where everyone is an automatic delegate, a system that is more about information  and raising each individual up to accept the responsibilities and rights of a free people  instead of the unabashed sell-off of influence we now see.  The movement’s objectives are the hallmark of the success of the great American experiment.

People have a fundamental, God-given First Amendment right to petition government.  Utah State law requires that the petition process be used to enable unaffiliated candidates the chance to get their name on the ballot.  Many people in this state chose to exercise their basic first amendment right to petition the government on behalf of Farley Anderson for Governor, using electronic signatures. The State of Utah is in full opposition to this process. The people already have a fundamentally guaranteed first amendment right, and Utah law already states that an electronic signature is the equivalent of a paper signature in every legal way.  I guarantee that if we were talking about e-dollars instead of e-signatures on a petition, that every county and the Lt Governor’s office would immediately find a way to verify the signatures.  While the battle has caught the attention of national and world media and “the eyes of the nation are upon Utah”, it feels more like a couple of guys with big ideas taking on the giant of establishment power.  If you can imagine, our state’s executive branch is even suing the county clerks who are friendly to these constitutional rights.  Remove ignorance and greed from politics and we have a fair shot at restoring our Republic (Farley Anderson author of the book the Restoration of our Republic and Utah State Gubernatorial candidate hopeful).

We believe that this is a battle worth fighting.  The petition process gives the people an enormous check on government power.  Anything that makes the political process more participatory to more people is a good thing.  This process enabled the Anderson campaign to be the first ever to receive signature petition support from every county in Utah, as well as from Utah citizens currently overseas.

We actually found that the electronic signatures required, on average, five to ten times the work to gather as their paper counterpart; as the process was new and unfamiliar to most people.  We felt good about the process, however, as we knew that the support was genuine.  People had time to actually consider what they were signing in the privacy of their own home and did so of their own accord.  We believe that this is a people-empowering and building process far superior to the traditional petitions that are often signed without thought or consideration by many people.  The process included going to a secure website, signing the signature electronically, checking a box indicating under penalty of law that the person signing is that person, filling in the required field with information that must exactly match with the voter’s registrar, and then finally use the last four digits of their driver’s license as a pin. The signing is witnessed from a remote location as provided for in Utah State code.

All in all, the system is far more thoughtful and secure than that required with paper signatures.  We provided the county clerks with the petitions in paper form, along with a special access number to go into the site to verify and gather the information in whatever format they desired. This process can save government vast amounts of time and money in what is otherwise the very mundane task of petition verification. The process is especially appealing to the younger generation, who is in general more computer savvy and often feels left out of the current political process.

Some argue that part of the prescribed process is to be able to face the petitioner.  This logic is hollow.  Many petitions are circulated by paid petitioners whose only motivation is to get paid, generally per signature.  If time and circumstance would allow most would agree that if a petition could be dropped off at the home and the signer given the time to consider the petition at leisure that it would be superior to the way most petitions are signed, even if the signer never saw the person who dropped it off and picked it up.  Under this circumstance would the signature not be accepted under the current system?  Should this process be any less valid because we dropped it off top the home  electronically, unless of course the real motivation is to keep this power from the people?

What the Utah Lt Governor’s office refers to as merely typed names on a paper are in reality real legal signatures submitted by real American citizens exercising real first amendment guaranteed rights to petition government.  Any argument to the contrary belies the fact that these citizens engaged in a process that is far more thoughtful, more secure, more representative and more open and user friendly to our people than what has been traditionally used.  The entire focus is being steered away from this basic premise and the government’s responsibility to verify and not to usurp this process.  We will gladly entertain any argument as to the validity of these premises and of the process itself, but believe that it is entirely inappropriate to disenfranchise these citizens based upon the whims of the executive branch.  If the executive branch is concerned that these signatures were somehow produced by “magic” and are not representative of the people listed, they have many tools available to assist in the verification, not the least of which is to ask the citizen.  Interestingly, this does not seem to even be a question.  This guaranteed first Amendment right is unalienable and denies no one of their life, liberty, or property to exercise.  After an initial process creating a policy and instruction to subordinates this process will save precious time and resources of government to accept.  Every single county in Utah participated in the process of petitioning on behalf of Mr. Farley Anderson for governor, something that has never happened before in any political campaign, thus demonstrating the increased openness of the system.  The county clerks who received instruction from our Lt Governor’s office were actually being told to violate their oath of office to protect the constitutionally guaranteed rights of citizens they represent.  When the Lt Governor’s office proclaimed that the law requires only paper signatures be verified when no such law exists, a usurpation by the executive branch of government occurred, thus making new law. Further, by refusing to accept the petitions verified by the counties, we see a further usurpation of the state government over the rightful responsibility and rights of the counties.  All of this is underscored by open and unabashed, politically-motivated unfairness to keep an unaffiliated candidate for governor from receiving a constitutionally guaranteed right to be placed on the ballot and thus possibly jeopardizing the employment of the Lt Governor.  We recognize a legitimate governmental role to create standards, but if no standard has been established then each county clerk is responsible to take reasonable measures to accommodate their citizens. Otherwise we are back to the patently un-American assumption that people only have rights after they have been given them by a legislative body.

The Story.  A grassroots movement in Utah dedicated to the cause of proving that it is possible to run an effective information-based campaign without a sell-out to special interests or the support of major political parities, decided to use the power of the internet and an e-signature petition to put their candidate on the ballot. The first snag we ran up against was a letter from the State’s Lt Governor’s office to county clerks informing them that the law requires only a paper-based system, when no such law exists.  Some county clerks may need to be reminded that their oath of office is to protect basic constitutional rights of people in their county and not to the Lt Governor and to the political party for which he stands.    Four brave county clerks independently chose to certify the signatures.  Next, the petitions with the required number of county clerk certified signatures (both electronic gathered and paper gathered) were turned into the Lt Governor’s office at the prescribed time and in the prescribed format.  Again, to our astonishment, we were denied access, as they would not even accept the petition. Our only option at this point was to sue for redress. Since this is a statewide issue, the only court of jurisdiction is the Utah State Supreme Court. We immediately obtained a writ to serve papers and force the Lt Governor’s office to accept the petitions and give us a hearing to determine if the executive branch has the authority to make law and usurp county authority to certify petitions.  We felt that if we could narrow the scope to these two issues that we could mostly represent ourselves and, with limited legal help, mount an effective response.  The State has responded by claiming that the entire block of Salt Lake County signatures (which has the largest block of certified e-signatures) are invalid.  They argue that because of this, the required number of signatures was not turned in.

Why is this important? This case will set a precedent for the entire nation to follow.  As some are also aware, the legislature has significantly raised the number of signatures required and shortened the time to gather the signatures, making it impractical in Utah to use the citizens’ referendum and initiative as the peoples check and balance of government.  The use of electronic signatures can restore balance back to the people.  With voters involved any bad law could be brought before the people on the next ballot in a referendum.  In addition, every bad law ever written could face this citizen’s review.  This battle has caught the attention of national media and the imagination of people from many states.  This is a powerful tool to bring a restoration of our Republic.  Now I need to ask again for your support to bring this to completion.    Note–while as a candidate I have covenanted not to take special interest or corporate money.   I feel that this first amendment legal battle is beyond my campaign and the People’s right will accept any legal/financial help offered.  Legal support should be directed to:

The People’s Right

P.O. Box 179

Kanosh UT 84637

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