Verifying Signatures for Referendum 71

To qualify for the ballot, the sponsors of Referendum 71 must submit 120,577 valid signatures of Washington registered voters.

The sponsors submitted approximately 137,689 signatures on approximately 9,359 petition sheets. This number will likely change by the end of the signature verification process, though not significantly.

The most relevant number is the number of signatures “Accepted” because qualification for the 2009 General Election ballot requires 120,577 valid signatures of Washington registered voters.         

As of 9/2/09 at 9:00 am:

 Click here for a spreadsheet showing a breakdown of signatures by bound volume.

Petition sheets contain up to 20 signatures.

To verify the signatures, petition sheets are bound together into volumes.  For Referendum 71, each bound volume contains approximately 15 petition sheets, for a total of approximately 623 bound volumes.

Each signer must be a registered voter in Washington.  Each signature is compared to the signature in the person’s voter registration file.

Each signer may only sign once; after the first signature is accepted, all subsequent signatures found will be rejected.

 
Signatures in Volumes are the total number of signatures in the bound volumes that have been checked so far, including a second review by a master checker.  This number is not the total number of signatures submitted.  The total number of signatures submitted by Referendum 71 sponsors is 137,689.  The final number of signatures submitted may go up or down slightly by the end of the verification.

Accepted are the signatures in each bound volume that have been accepted. 

Rejected are the signatures in each bound volume that have been rejected.  They have been rejected based on one of four reasons.

Registration Not Found refers to the signatures in each bound volume in which the signer does not appear to be registered to vote in Washington.  A registration for this person was not found in the statewide voter registration database.  These signatures will be rejected because a signer must be registered to vote in Washington for the signature to be valid.  There are approximately 3.6 million people registered to vote in Washington.

Signature Image Pending refers to the signatures in each bound volume in which the Secretary of State is obtaining a better image of the voter registration signature.  The digital image of a signature in the statewide voter registration database may be of poor quality, or was not transmitted properly from the county voter registration system to the state voter registration system.  In these cases, the Secretary of State works with the county where the signer is registered to vote to obtain a better image of the voter registration signature.  Once a better signature image is obtained, it will be reviewed.  Experience indicates that many of the signatures in this category are accepted.  This category of signatures will remain fluid until the end of the verification process because the Secretary of State’s Office will continue to receive the images from county election offices until that time.

No Match refers to the signatures in each bound volume that do not match the signature in the person’s voter registration file.  A signature that does not appear to match the signature on file must be reviewed by at least two checkers before it is finally rejected.

Duplicate describes the signatures in each bound volume that appear in Referendum 71 more than once.  Only one signature from each registered voter may be accepted.  Once a voter’s signature is accepted, any duplicate signatures on Referendum 71 petition sheets found after that are rejected.  Experience indicates that this number will slowly increase as a full verification progresses and more signatures have been accepted.

Latest Totals are the number of signatures in the bound volumes that have completed the verification process.  Completing the verification process includes the second review by a master checker.

Percentages are the Latest Totals for each category of signatures, divided by Latest Totals of signatures checked.  For example, the percentage under Registration Not Found is the Latest Total of Registration Not Found divided by the Latest Total of Signatures.

Bound Volume refers to petition sheets bound together into a volume.  The petition sheets are bound into volumes to conduct the verification process.  Each volume contains approximately 15 petition sheets.  Each bound volume is numbered.  Referendum 71 has approximately 623 bound volumes.