On May 7, proponents of an initiative in Long Beach, California, filed a federal lawsuit against a restrictive California election law concerning validity of signatures on petitions. Section 105 of the California election code says a signature on any type of petition is invalid, if the address of the voter on the petition differs from the voter’s address in voter registration records.

This law, interpreted literally, means that a voter who signs a petition and who then moves and promptly re-registers at the new address, will have his or her signature invalidated. This happens because there is obviously a time lag between the day the voter signs the petition, and the day the petition was checked. While it may seem that this does not happen very often, it did happen often enough to affect one particular initiative this year.

A Long Beach city initiative to legalize medical marijuana was circulated this year. Proponents needed 33,543 valid signatures and submitted 43,159. The city did a random sample of the petition. The results are so close, the random sample will determine that the petition had enough valid signatures only if the California law is construed to validate the signature of eleven particular voters (whose signature were chosen for the random sample) who listed their correct address at the time on the petition, but who then moved and re-registered. If these signatures are not counted, then the petition failed the random sample process. The case is Coltharp v Herrera, central district, 2:13-cv-3263.