Kimball Petition Management

Petition Companies

Kimball Petition Management, or KPM, is a company that offers signature gathering services to ballot initiative campaigns.

About

Fred Kimball founded the company in California in 1984. Fred Kimball was profiled in a 1998 article, "Collecting Signatures for a Price," in the Washington Post. The article's author, David Broder, said that Kimball Petition Management was a "favorite of the teachers and unions, trial lawyers and gaming interests."

Petition drives

The following ballot measures appeared on the ballot after the sponsoring campaign committee hired Kimball Petition Management to collect signatures. Since 2016, seven ballot measures appeared on the ballot after the sponsoring committee(s) hired Kimball Petition Management to gather signatures. Of the seven measures that appeared on the ballot, four were approved and three were defeated. Sponsoring committees paid an average of $5,330,489.67 in total for National Petition Management's signature gathering services per ballot measure across the years.

Measures on the ballot (2016-2022)

Year	Measure	Measure description	Total cost	Signatures required	CPRS	Outcome
2016	California Proposition 55	Extension of personal income tax on incomes over $250,000	$4,236,577.66	585,407	$7.24	a
2016	California Proposition 56	Increase the cigarette tax by $2.00 per pack	$4,524,176.13	585,407	$7.73	a
2016	California Proposition 57	Felons convicted of non-violent crimes and juvenile trials	$4,818,267.20	585,407	$8.23	a
2016	California Proposition 64	Legalization of marijuana and hemp	$2,093,616.10	585,407	$5.72	a
2018	California Proposition 8	Requires dialysis clinics to issue refunds for revenue above a certain amount	$1,648,357.38	365,880	$4.51	d
2020	California Proposition 23	Requires physician on-site at dialysis clinics and consent from the state for a clinic to close	$5,524,184.44	623,212	$8.86	d
2022	California Proposition 29	Require dialysis clinics to have at least one physician, nurse practitioner, or physician assistant while patients are being treated; report data on dialysis-related infections; and not discriminate against patients based on the source of payment for care.	$13,374,336.75	623,212	$21.46	d

This chart was last updated after statewide ballot measure elections in 2022.

Ballot initiative signature costs

See also: Laws governing the initiative process and Analysis of signature costs in past years

The cost of getting an initiative before voters varies widely by state and by initiative proposal. The requirements and restrictions imposed by state law form a major factor in the expense of an initiative signature petition effort.

Higher signature requirements are a straightforward example of a reason an initiative petition campaign might be more expensive in one state than in another. Other restrictions that can make a difference in the cost of a petition campaign include:

• Distribution requirements - It is easier and less expensive to collect a lot of signatures in one very populous area than a small number of signatures from lots of smaller, less-populated areas.
• Pay-per-signature bans - Paying signature gatherers by signature is one of the most cost-efficient ways to fund signature gathering efforts.
• Restrictions on circulators - Restricting who can collect signatures limits competition between petition companies and professional signature gatherers.
• Initiative petition circulation periods - If proponents have less time to collect signatures, the process can be more expensive.

Measuring the cost

See also: Analysis of signature costs in past years

Ballotpedia uses two ways to measure the cost of an initiative or veto referendum petition drive.

1. According to the total cost of gathering the required signatures to put the initiative or veto referendum on the ballot
2. According to the total cost divided by the number of signatures required to qualify the measure for the ballot or Cost Per Required Signature (CPRS)

Total cost: The total cost depends on all of the factors that can make a petition effort more or less expensive, including the population of the state and the state's signature requirements. This measurement does not necessarily indicate how difficult it is to run a signature petition campaign in a state relative to other states or how hard and expensive it is to collect a given valid signature. It takes into consideration the population and signature requirements for a state. For example, the average total cost of a successful initiative petition drive in California in 2016 was just over $2.9 million, while in Oklahoma the average total cost was about $870,000. Initiatives in California, however, require over four times as many signatures and affect 10 times as many people.

Cost Per Required Signature (CPRS): The cost per required signature cuts out the variable of a state's signature requirements and shows the cost for each signature needed to qualify the measure for the ballot. This second measurement is a better indication of how difficult it is to run a signature petition campaign in a given state relative to other states. For example, the average CPRS in California in 2016 was $6.20 while the average CPRS in Oklahoma was $9.59, but the average total petition cost was $2.9 million in California and about $870,000 in Oklahoma.

From the perspective of a national organization or proponents of a national agenda, this means that a lower CPRS generally means that a campaign could potentially affect more people and achieve more political influence per dollar spent, while the total petition cost might dictate in which states the campaign could actually afford to launch a successful petition drive.

See also

• Ballot initiative
• Ballot measures cost per required signatures analysis
• Petition drive management companies
• Laws governing the initiative process
• Signature requirements for ballot measures
• Initiative petition signature validity rates
• Initiative petition circulation periods

External links

• Kimball Petition Management website