The Seattle Times offers this report about this ruling of the federal district court. Eugene Volokh is unpersuaded:
- That reasoning strikes me as unpersuasive, for the same reasons I mentioned in late July; I don’t think that secrecy of signatures is constitutionally mandated by the First Amendment, just as I don’t think that a secret ballot is constitutionally mandated by the First Amendment. True, the anonymous speech precedents bar the government from requiring that people sign their political statements. But political statements are just speech. Signing an initiative, referendum, or recall petition is a legally operative act — it helps achieve a particular result not just because of its persuasiveness, but because it is given legal effect by the state election law.