On November 2, California elections officials completed their random sample check of the Americans Elect petition to be a qualified party. Americans Elect had submitted 1,621,318 signatures to meet a requirement of 1,030,040 valid signatures. The random sample shows that the petition has a 69.55% validity rate, and that the petition has 1,127,634 valid signatures.
However, California Election code section 9031(a) says that when a statewide initiative petition random sample shows that the number of valid signatures is less than 110% of the legal requirement, then the elections officials can’t use the results of the random sample, and must check every signature. The process of checking every signature will be expensive for elections officials. The job must be done in six weeks, starting today. The Secretary of State applies the initiative random sample rules to petitions to qualify new parties.
Americans Elect is free to submit more signatures, although it almost certainly doesn’t feel the need to do so. A statistician would say that any petition as large as this one, with a random sample validity of 109.5% of the requirement, is overwhelmingly likely to be valid.
This instance shows that excessively difficult ballot access is bad for election administrators and taxpayers, as well as bad for parties and candidates.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V
Equal nominating petitions for each separate candidate.
NO statewide *party* petitions needed or wanted.
How many States manage to survive by having statewide petitions for U.S. Senators, State Guvs, etc. ???
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They should have collected more signatures in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.
I say bleed the Californians and make ’em beg.
I hope Jerry Brown blows a fuse and tries to do something about this colossal waste of money.
Democrats don’t want Americans Elect on ballot as they know it will hurt them. Most likely a liberal businessman will emerge as the candidate. Liberals will do what they can to hijack the process. Republicans are more disciplined voters and will vote their candidate. However many Democrats are not satisfied with Obama and some may jump toward a third party. So look for Dems like Debra Bowen to try to trip up Americans Elect. Remember the dirty tricks played on Ralph Nader.
The petition signature requirement to qualify a political party of the ballot in California is absolutely insane. This signature requirement ought to be cut to a much lower number.
“The Secretary of State applies the initiative random sample rules to petitions to qualify new parties.”
Elections Code 5100(c):
“… This petition shall be circulated, signed, verified and the signatures of the voters on it shall be certified to and transmitted to the Secretary of State by the county elections officials substantially as provided for initiative petitions…”
Since Americans Elect is attempting to qualify for a presidential election, the Secretary of State is not free to make up her own rules, but must follow the law established by the legislature.
Since you can’t submit additional signatures for an initiative, why do you think that is not true for party petition?
In a case like this, whose fault is it that AE gathered so few signatures in a major county like Santa Clara? Is it so hard to gather signatures in San Jose, that paid solicitors won’t go there? Or are folks in Silicon Valley more face to face oriented and simply don’t use the internet?
I’m confused. So will AE be on ballot or not?
#8… stand by. That’s what this signature verification is all about.
Any idea regarding how many were in the random sample?
Actually the petition size has very little to do with the validity rate, it’s their sample size that is important. If they sampled only a couple of hundred signatures, and got the 69.55% figure, I’d be a lot more worried than if they checked a couple of thousand and got that amount.
The law should be re-written so that if the first sample is between 105% and 110%, a larger second sample should take place, prior to wasting the taxpayers money on a total count.
They could also state that since 109.5% rounds up to 110%, that it is good enough. After all, the law itself rounds to the nearest whole number (it doesn’t say 110.0% does it?).
#5
Or another way of looking at it is that the moderates, not necessarily Democrats, are frustrated with Obama for whatever reason and go to a moderate although flip-flopping Romney or a moderate AE ticket. You seem to assume that everyone is either a Democrat or Republican.
The random sample was 3%.
California petitions are processed by county. The sample is 3%, unless that is less than 500, in which case the sample is 500 or all the signatures, if there were less than 500 in the county.
A sample will miss most duplicates.
http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ballot-measures/americans-elect.htm
Note that many of the duplicates were found in counties where all the signatures or a substantial number were checked.
Riley @7
Yes, San Jose is a pretty tough place to petition. They don’t like to stop much less sign anything.
The California random sample method is capable of finding instances in which a voter signed the petition more than once.
Although I’m not sure, I believe that there has never been an instance in which a statewide California initiative random sample has estimated a number of valid signatures between 105% and 110% of the requirement, and then when all the signatures were checked, the petition failed. I know the California county election officials have asked the legislature to amend the law to say that if the random sample shows 105% are likely valid, that that should be good enough. The existing law is odd, because the zone in which all the signatures must be checked is between 95% and 110%. Logically, it should be either 95%-105%, or 90%-110%.
How many different petitions being circulated in CA per second — due to the minoirity rule gerrymander monsters in the CA legislature ???
Which State has the highest percentage of middle muddled mystified M3 voters ???
Govt control freak schemes — more, same, less.
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I did some quick math on this.
A 99% confidence interval actually puts the AE validity rate between 69.01% and 70.09%–well above the needed 63.53%. 63.53% of the 1,621,318 signatures would result in the 1,030,040 needed. This calculation takes CA’s sample as 3% of the submitted signatures.
Confidence Interval Formula:
sample mean +- z-score SqRt( (p * q) / (n) )
Calculation:
69.55% +- 2.576 SqRt( (0.6955 * 0.3045)/(0.03 * 1,621,318) )
= 69.55%(69.01%, 70.09%)
#19, that’s good work. Thank you.
Any list of recent prior sample results for statewide petitions — per county ???
#15 It will find some instances of duplicates. But the number found will be so small that it might not be possible to reliably estimate the total number of duplicates.
When you are checking for invalid signatures, your sample should get you very close to 3% of the invalid signatures, but you are comparing that with close to 100% of the registered voters (there will be some errors so it not quite 100%).
But the only duplicates you will detect are when there are two instances of a voter within that 3% sample. You will have around 3% of the signatures that are duplicated, but only .09% of the duplicated pairs.
If your sample estimate is 95%, any duplicates will lower it even further, meaning that there is even greater certainty of failure.
If your sample estimate is 110%, any duplicates will reduce the probability of success.
And the AE candidate will be?
Viable candidate?
Can’t be more than one to three possibilities.
Someone must have a fixed plan in place.
Who?
Bloomberg, if he wants it.
Huntsman if he’d bolt party lines.
Perhaps if the Republicans don’t nominate Romney, he’s so desperate, he accept any nomination.
Hermin Cain, if as expected, he falters within the Republican process.
Anyone on the left center of the equation should the Republicans go far right?
Or will AE end up with someone who has zero chance, such as a Nader type. Pure spoiler with zero prospects of winning.
Overall, at this point, the chance of a actual AE victory…perhaps 5%. A impact candidate 20%.
They missed by a handful of signatures. What an embarrassment for Arno.
If they hadn’t filed LA ahead of the deadline, and continued to do their cleanup they could have made it. I’m sure it was either a cost cutting decission on Arno’s part, or Ackerman wouldn’t wouldn’t release any more money until California was filed.
Either way to miss he random by such a slim margin is another indication of Arno’s sloppy, short-sighted methodology.
#24 Why would someone mess up so badly in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties? In most big counties they got signatures from around 5% of the population. In Santa Clara and San Mateo, about 1/2 that. They got high yields, but so what.
Let’s say you can get 72% yield from the first 100,000 signatures. And 64% from the next 100,000. It drops your overall yield to 68%, but it is another 64,000 signatures.
Santa Clara and San Mateo have the 2nd and 4th highest percentage of NPP voters (San Francisco and Mono are 1st and 3rd). Santa Clara has 6% more than the statewide average.
You would think Silicon Valley voters would be more sympathetic to AE than average (or maybe this doesn’t matter when you are gathering signatures?).