`Think before you sign' -- no takebacks of signatures

June 29, 2010

We offer this important caveat to efforts by some to persuade people to withdraw their signatures from amongst the hundreds of thousands that are submitted by sponsors to the Secretary of State for checking. While allowing withdrawal of signatures might seem like a logical and easy practice, in fact we do not remove signatures once they have been collected by sponsors and submitted to our office for verification. (A rough analogy might be that voters cannot recall their mail-in ballot if they change their mind about a particular race or ballot measure after voting.)

Individuals who signed a petition may send a note to our state Elections Division indicating that they did not mean to sign the petition, thought they had signed a different petition, were misled, changed their mind, etc. We will keep these on file as part of the public record for the ballot measure in question. We do not search through 20,000 petition sheets with perhaps 300,000 or more names, looking for a particular name that may or may not be there. The July deadline for submitting initiatives is in the Constitution and begins a fast-track period that leads up to the September 7 certification of General Election candidates and ballot measures. While most initiative and referendum signature checks are done with a random sample, we would have to conduct a 100 percent check of all withdrawal letters -- which is the tail wagging the dog. A 100 percent signature check can take six weeks or more of double-shifts. There is an old Attorney General's Opinion that says the Secretary of State's Office has the authority to establish rules for withdrawals, but it does not say we are required to accept withdrawals. We don't. Besides the time hurdle, we do not want to create an incentive for opposition groups to launch a "withdraw" campaign. The purpose of the signature check is to determine if a sufficient number of signatures have been submitting supporting the ballot measure; it is not to determine if an opposition campaign outnumbers the support campaign. Also, people change their minds on matters of public policy all the time. Signing a petition is not the same as voting on the issue raised in the petition. A signer is free to vote against the measure if it makes it to the ballot. We hope that voters will inform themselves on the content of ballot measures before affixing their names. Voters' use of this constitutionally-guaranteed process of citizen-legislation requires that we all do our homework and due diligence before signing, and not rely solely on the headline on a petition sheet or the representations made by the signature-gatherer. The entire text of each initiative and an independent description prepared by the Attorney General are available on the petitions themselves, online, and via the campaigns. In most cases, opposition groups have been formed and are a source of information should you so desire.

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