California Insider

A Weblog by
Sacramento Bee Columnist Daniel Weintraub

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« The hints keep coming | | Shelley responds »

June 27, 2003

A sign of things to come

Aside from the dueling interpretations of the law, county registrars are telling me that they are facing at least one technical obstacle to verifying the recall petitions. Normally with ballot measures, they check the signatures on petitions all at once, and their computers tell them when duplicates show up. That is, if a voter has signed more than one petition. But with the recall, they are getting signatures in batches. If they verify one batch, and then another, and another, the same person might have signed petitions in each batch and their computers would never catch it. Several counties are trying to get a quick software patch to fix that glitch.

In the meantime, the state association of county clerks and elections officers has gathered up a list of questions about the process and will be forwarding it to the Secretary of State’s office next week. They want all the counties to be on the same page before they move forward. Among the queries: can they do a random sample or must they verify every signature? I thought it was long-since settled that they could do a sample. Apparently not.

Bottom line: we’re not going to be getting any updates on signature verification for a while.

P.S. A friendly reader suggests that as I start portraying Kevin Shelley as a partisan Democratic operator, I should also note that Shelley recently went out on the limb trying to ensure that President Bush would be listed on the 2004 ballot in California even though Bush won't be re-nominated until after the ballot deadline here. Suggestion taken.