HELENA -- Helena resident Libbi Lovshin says when she agreed to sign a property rights ballot-measure petition Thursday outside a local grocery store, the signature-gather said the measure required three separate signings.

"He said, 'I need you to sign down here, too, because we can't do carbon copies,''' she told the Lee Newspapers State Bureau.

But when Lovshin looked closely at the other documents she was told to sign, she saw they were separate petitions for two ballot measures she did not support: One to cap state spending and another to make it easier to recall judges.

"It just seemed really deceptive to me,'' she said. "I think it calls into question all the signatures on all of those other two pages. How do you know if those people stopped to read that before they signed?''

Lovshin is among several people this week reporting what they saw as deception by those trying to gather signatures to place three measures on the November ballot: Constitutional initiatives 97 and 98 and Initiative 154.

CI-97 would amend the state constitution to cap state spending; CI-98 would make it easier to recall judges; I-154 would change state law to make it harder for government to condemn private property for public use.

The state Office of Political Practices and secretary of state's office said they received complaints, and Lovshin and another woman spoke with the Lee Newspapers State Bureau.

Trevis Butcher, campaign coordinator for the three measures, said he thinks the complaints are ''completely unfounded.'' He said he contacted the signature-gathering coordinator in Helena, where the complaints originated, and was assured that no deceptive practices are being used.

"We certainly would never endorse anybody misleading anybody,'' said Butcher, a Winifred rancher and political activist.

Boulder resident Dee Anna, however, told the Lee Newspapers State Bureau that she had an experience similar to Lovshin's.

Anna said she and her husband, Jim Heikes, were buying gasoline at Safeway in Helena on Wednesday when a signature-gatherer approached them.

He presented the property-rights measure, which restricts the state's use of eminent domain condemnation powers, and Heikes agreed to sign it, Anna said.

"Then he said we need to sign on two other places, without any comment at all about what it was, until we put him on the spot, and then he said something about it,'' she said.

The "other two places'' were petitions for CI-98 and CI-97, which Anna said she and her husband oppose.

"It's like entrapment, is what it felt like,'' she said. "It wasn't aboveboard. It wasn't direct and honest.''

Supporters of CI-98, CI-97 and I-154 have until June 23 to gather enough signatures of registered voters to qualify the measures for the general election ballot this November.

They need about 44,600 signatures to qualify the constitutional measures and 22,300 signatures to qualify the regular initiative.

The effort is using paid signature-gatherers. Butcher said many of the signature-gathers are from Montana, but that some are not.

He said the campaign has "eight or nine major coordinators'' for signature-gathering. Some are private companies, which are from outside Montana, and some are independent contractors, Butcher said.

Butcher said signature-gatherers are getting paid by the signature, but he declined to say how much.

Sanna Porte, spokeswoman for MEA-MFT, which is leading the campaign against CI-97, said she's not surprised its backers are using paid, out-of-state signature-gatherers to attempt to get the measure on the ballot.

MEA-MFT is the state's largest labor union, representing mostly public employees. More than two-thirds of its members are teachers.

CI-97 is part of a national movement to place spending-cap measures on the ballot, by anti-government groups to restrict government spending, Porte said. They often use private companies that hire itinerant signature-gatherers, she said.

She said the effort calls into question the claim that CI-97 is a "home-grown effort,'' as claimed by its supporters.

Butcher said the steering committees for all three measures are made up entirely of Montanans, and that many state legislators are involved in the CI-97 campaign.

He also said if there's a national effort, it's on the part of public-employee unions trying to quash anything that limits government spending.

"There is no place where public-employee labor unions want to see any fiscal restraint in government,'' Butcher said.