`Guard your signature'.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury is on a timely campaign - no, not that campaign - with Attorney General Hardy Myers to alert Oregonians to be cautious when approached to sign an initiative petition.

The warning is timely because July 5 is the deadline for initiative sponsors to turn in their signatures to the state Elections Division. That makes June the heaviest signature-gathering time of the year for initiative sponsors trying to qualify their proposals for the November general election ballot.

Of particular concern to Bradbury and Myers is the fact that many initiative sponsors employ paid signature collectors. Bradbury says the paid collectors are generally a roving band of out-of-staters who are motivated not by a commitment to public policy, but by the bounty of $1 to $3, and sometimes as much as $5, paid to the collector for each signature.

In this atmosphere, fraud is not uncommon. In fact, there have been 42 prosecutions in Oregon for forgeries of signatures over the past 12 years, with 39 of those prosecutions resulting in convictions.

Bradbury's and Myers' "guard your signature" project warns voters to to read the petition's explanation before signing. Bradbury advises Oregonians to treat their signatures as carefully as their votes. The secretary of state and attorney general also ask voters to report suspicious behavior by signature collectors to the Elections Division (503-986-1519). Such voter complaints have led to the conviction of two circulators in the past six months. Bradbury will also ask the 2003 Legislature to approve funding for a full-time investigator in the Elections Division.

But for now, here are a few tips for voters who are asked this month to sign initiative petitions:

1) Don't sign a petition without first getting an understandable explanation of what the proposal would accomplish.

2) If you're not registered to vote, you're legally forbidden from signing an initiative petition. Outrageously, there is no legal requirement that the signature collector be a registered voter in Oregon. There should be.

3) Be wary of collectors asking you for "confirmation" or "verification" signatures. There is no legal requirement for such signatures, and they often are a way for collectors to gain multiple signatures on multiple initiatives without the voter's knowledge. If you're asked to sign more than one page of an initiative, find out what each page seeks to accomplish before you sign.,

4) If you decide to sign an initiative, take the time to fill out the information box on the petition sheet. That'll make it tougher for your signature to be forged.

5) Before signing, ask to see the summary sheet. That'll tell you what you're signing seeks to do.

As Bradbury and Myers say, most signature collectors operate within the law. But as those 39 forgery convictions show, some don't. Voters should make the bad guys' jobs more difficult. Just as Oregon's initiative and referendum process is intended to belong to the citizens, citizens themselves have an important role to play in safeguarding the integrity of the process.