Penalties for fraud
We are often unable to prove fraud because of weak standards of evidence. Further, we are unable to deter it because there are not clear penalties in place for a) the petitioners and b) the funders of the fraudulent behavior.
Monetary fines may work well against individual petitioners, but that has not been tried on a large scale. If the firms are clearly shown to be involved in the fraud (often signature gatherers will testify against others when they are prosecuted) there should be a mechanism to punish their complicity. Often the larger firms or subcontractors have full knowledge of fraudulent activity and in fact train their petitioners on how to get away with "small amounts" of fraud. A monetary fine leveled against the firm that is coordinating signature gathering efforts would make an impact. For the firms, subcontractors, and circulators, money is the only motive.
However, for proponent campaigns, the toughest penalty is to remove signatures from the overall valid count. Signatures are the commodity, and if illegal signatures are removed, it could jeopardize their likelihood of qualifying. That becomes a monetary fine in essence, because campaigns pay large amounts to the signature firms to oversee petitioning, and if an initiative does not qualify, campaigns do not get their money back.
