R-71 update: 103,000 signatures approved

August 26, 2009

The latest signature update for Referendum 71 shows that signature checkers have approved more than 103,000 signatures.

Nearly 7,000 signatures have been counted since Tuesday’s update, bringing the cumulative total to 117,069 checked signatures. Of this total, 103,198 have been accepted and 13,871 have been rejected for one reason or another. The overall error rate is now 11.85 percent, just a little up from the 11.81 percent reported Tuesday. In order to make the November statewide ballot, the referendum’s overall rejection rate must not go over 12.4 percent. The R-71 sponsors, Protect Marriage Washington, need 120,577 valid Washington voter signatures for the measure to be placed on the ballot. And now, the breakdown of the rejections: 11,178 people whose registration were not found, 1,160 whose petition signature did not match the one on file, 1,477 duplicates and 56 cases where checkers have asked the voter’s home county for an electronic signature that can be compared with the signature on the petition. As for the “third check,” another 152 previously “not founds” in Volumes 221 through 266 were moved to the “accepted” pile on Monday. There now have been 713 names moved to the “accepted” category after a review of Volumes 1-266. On this spreadsheet, Volume 266 is highlighted, which shows how far the third checkers have gone with this particular check. The third check process was started as a way to review the names of petition signers whose names did not appear on the snapshot of the voter registration database that checkers had been using from the start of the checking process. The live version of this database is being used to check those names in question. The R-71 sponsors are trying to overturn the recently adopted “everything but marriage” law (SB 5688) that expands state rights and responsibilities to state-registered domestic partners so that they equal those granted to married couples.

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