A San Mateo judge has rejected an initiative petition signature captured using an iPhone touch screen, dealing a setback to the technology's proponents, who say it could help low-cost, grassroots initiative campaigns qualify for the ballot.
In line with a tentative ruling issued last month, San Mateo Superior Court Judge George Miram ruled that the initiative petition signature submitted by a founder of Verafirma does not meet the requirements for petition signatures set out in the state's election code.
Miram wrote in the order, dated last Friday and filed Monday, that the electronic petition did not meet requirements for "an elections official to determine whether the voter personally affixed their signature to the petition" without additional information.
"Merely viewing the virtual 'petition' without an explanation of the technology prevents an election official from determining whether the voter personally affixed their signature or some other technology was employed whereby a third party affixed the signature," Miram wrote.
But Verafirma co-founder Jude Barry, a Democratic political consultant, countered that reviewing a signature captured electronically should be considered no different for an election official than viewing one on a paper petition. If anything, he said, the technology creates safeguards nonexistent in paper petitions, such as stroke data as well as the time and location that the signature was recorded, making it more secure.
"If the court standard were applied to paper, no initiative would qualify," Barry said.
Barry also disagreed with the judge's argument that a digital petition contained in a USB drive or electronic file does not meet certain election code specifications, including a requirement of 1-inch margins around the text on each page of the petition.
"Anyone who's adjusted margins on a Word document program knows that an electronic document does indeed have margins," he said.
Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who filed an argument in support of rejecting the signature, welcomed the judge's ruling.
"The court was very clear and its ruling coincides with what I've said from the beginning. The law requires original initiative petitions containing original signatures on them to be submitted to elections officials, not virtual petitions with copies of signatures," she said in a statement.
Barry said the company plans to appeal the ruling. "We know this is a temporary setback, but we've always felt that this was the beginning not the end of a legal process that we would have to go to," he said.
Click here to read the judge's order.
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