As the number of duplicate signatures is now almost 12% and has increased so has the rate of invalid signatures climbing about .3% almost every day this week. If the measure to repeal the state’s domestic partnership law finishes with a rate of over 12.4% invalid signatures then the measure will not be put on the ballot in November.
Yesterday, Gary Randall of the Faith and Freedom Network accused the Secretary of State’s office of speeding up the checking process and going too fast. Those details are here. This was met with a number of comments on the Secretary of State’s blog asking them to slow down its process, suggesting that this is what is causing the rise in invalid signatures. Who knows what the anti-gay bigots are up to (are they still trying to register people to vote?) but they seem to believe that at least time is on their side.
The state did a check of 450 signatures that were either accepted or rejected.
Of the 222 accepted signatures reviewed, 14 were changed from Accept to No Match, 6.3%. Two were changed from Accept to Signature Pending. Fifteen were designated as reject because a registration record could not be found for the signer. These 15 will be investigated further; the status of these signatures may or may not change depending on further research.
These were found among 222 signatures that had been accepted and the accepted signatures are never reviewed in this process except in this special case. The Secretary of State also reviewed 225 previously rejected signatures.
Of these 225 rejected signatures, 11 signatures that were previously not found in the voter registration rolls were found and then accepted during the special review. Another two signatures that were previously not found in the voter registration rolls were found during the special review, but the image of the signature was missing or of poor quality so they changed to Pending status. None of the signatures that had been rejected due to the signature on the petition not matching the signature on the voter registration file were accepted during the special review.
I am not sure what to make of this. They are saying it is basically a wash with only a net of +1 so they should not have to review all the accepted signatures but the fact that 11 people suddenly show up in the voter pool doesn’t necessarily say they were overlooked the first time.
But I think what they are trying to say if they review all the accepted signatures a 2nd time they want to review the rejected ones a 4th time to see if they have now become a registered voter.
