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TALLAHASSEE (July 29, 2004) -- The group attempting to repeal Florida’s high speed rail program could face millions of dollars in fines for improperly soliciting signatures in its statewide petition campaign.
Arguing that the group Derail the Bullet Train (DEBT) has broken state laws in its petition drive, lawyers for bullet train advocate C.C. “Doc” Dockery today filed three complaints with the Florida Election Commission, saying DEBT should pay a $1,000 per signature penalty. The complaints are against DEBT, State Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher who is serving as chairman of DEBT, and David Goodstein who is also identified as chairman of DEBT.
Dockery’s complaint was filed as DEBT appeared to have gathered the 488,722 signatures necessary to place its repeal initiative on this November’s ballot.
“The purpose of the provision of having the name and address of a paid petition circulator on a petition form gathered by a paid petition circulator was to avoid voter fraud and maintain the integrity of the election process,” said Dockery’s attorney Robert Aranda. “There have been multiple allegations of voter fraud in the collection of signatures for the DEBT petitions stemming from the use of paid petition circulators. The allegations of voter fraud include paid petition gatherers forging the signatures of the voters who provide their signature for a different initiative petition onto the DEBT petition.”
DEBT has raised nearly $1.5 million – mostly from large corporations whose interests wouldn’t be served by high speed rail – to pay for the petition gathering drive. Last spring DEBT hired a California firm, ARNO Political Consultants, to orchestrate the signature drive. In recent weeks, published news accounts from around the state describe cases in which voters have been mislead by paid petition gatherers and in which election officials have discovered forged signatures. In one case a Panhandle elections official reviewing petitions discovered her own signature had been forged onto a petition. In South Florida, officials discovered the forged signature of a voter who was dead. All told, officials have rejected thousands of petitions.
Dockery said there is legal precedent for these fines. He noted that recently other Florida politicians have faced the $1,000 per signature penalty. If paid petition gatherers are responsible for 400,000 of the DEBT petitions, fines could theoretically reach $400 million, according to Dockery.
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