During Health Crisis, Election Officials Have More Difficulty Verifying Petition Signatures

Posted on by April 25, 2020
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Although much focus during the health crisis has been on the difficulty of petitioning, a related issue is that if a petition is submitted, it is now more difficult for election officials to check the validity of the signatures.  See this story, over a San Jose, California city initiative.  The signatures were submitted to the city clerk.  The city clerk counted the sheets, gave the proponents a receipt for the number of pages, and turned the petition over to the county registrar of voters.

But, in the process, several hundred sheets never reached the registrar, and were hopelessly lost.  The county registrar did a random sample of the petition and determined that it just barely didn’t qualify.  Then the proponents learned, and proved, that some of the sheets had been lost.  Now every signature on the petition must be checked.  There are almost 100,000 raw signatures.  The county is suing the city to recover at least part of the cost of checking the signatures.  The story reveals that it will cost approximately $1,000,000 to check the petition.

U.S. District Court in Michigan Re-Confirms Order Cutting the Number of Primary Signatures by 50%

Posted on by April 25, 2020
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At approximately 1 a.m. April 25, Saturday, U.S. District Court Judge Terrence Berg issued an order, again cutting the number of signatures for Michigan primary petitions by 50%.  The state had tried to persuade him to reconsider.  Esshaki v Whitmer, e.d., 2:20cv-10831.

See this story.  The judge wrote in his 16-page order, “The State asserts that the reduction in signatures is ‘an unprecedented disruption to the established and traditional process for candidates to gain ballot access in Michigan.’  The Court invited the State during oral argument to substantiate this assertion, but it was unable to do so.”

Eric Esshaki, Plaintiff in Michigan Ballot Access Lawsuit, Explains Why He Had More Signatures than Stated in His Lawsuit

Posted on by April 24, 2020
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As already reported, a U.S. District Court Judge cut the number of signatures for Michigan primary candidates early this week, and then the state filed a request for reconsideration, saying he didn’t really need the relief, so the decision should be altered to no longer cut the number of signatures.  The state said it knows he didn’t need the relief because he turned in approximately 1,200 signatures.

On April 24, the lead plaintiff, Eric Esshaki, who needed 1,000 signatures to get on the Republican primary ballot for U.S. House, filed a court document explaining that after he won the lawsuit, that got him so much publicity that many voters filled out the petition blank he had postally sent them and returned it to him.  So, when he submitted his petition, it had more signatures than he had expected.  Here is his interesting statement.  Many of the signatures returned to him were put in his home mailbox by persons driving by to help him, rather than going through the postal mail.  Unfortunately many of the signatures were invalid because people signed the petition as voters, but then didn’t fill out the bottom of the petition saying they were also the circulators.