The Washington Secretary of State announced a new twist in the signature verification process today that will make the previous days' statistics irrelevant.
According to the Secretary of State's Blog, From our Corner,
As the Elections Division begins a “recent registration check,” about 12 percent of those originally not found are being picked up via the current database that master checkers can access. Nick Handy, state elections director, called it “another dynamic in the mix” as the R-71 enters its final phase.
...
Of 2,401 rejects processed so far, 285 were found on the live database. Efforts by R-71 to secure a November ballot spot remains too close to call, he says.
Consequently the 7,805 disqualified signatures as of yesterday will likely drop to approximately 6,868, if the trend remains consistent. Anti equality activists will have a larger cushion than was previously thought. As of today, 77,637 signatures have been accepted toward the 120,557 needed to qualify. It is unclear whether today's table represents the new "dynamic in the mix" or if the rejected pile will decrease.
One thing is certain, the rights of 5844 families protected by domestic partnerships remained in limbo as the process concluded its 22 day.
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Signatures |
Rejection Reasons |
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Signatures in Volumes |
Accepted |
Rejected |
Registration Not Found |
Signature Image Pending |
No Match |
Duplicate |
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Latest Totals |
88,191 |
77,637 |
10,554 |
8,822 |
44 |
821 |
867 |
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100% |
88.03% |
11.97% |
10.00% |
0.05% |
0.93% |
0.98% |
Source: Washington Secretary of State 5:00 PM August 20, 2008
Comments
Election officials are RIGGING this election to get this anti-gay initiative on the ballot. How many times have they changed the process to benefit this anti-gay initiative?
* Election officials LIED to the media, told them the error rate needs to be lower than 14%. In reality it needs to be lower than 12.43%.
* On day five this referendum was NOT going to make it on the ballot then suddenly master fixers came in and "readjusted" the numbers by more than 19% thereby putting this referendum back in play. Gay people raised concerns about the process and guess what the election officials did? Looked at the same rejected signatures again. And you know what the rejected signature percent went down another 10%. Here we have the same rejected signatures looked at at least FOUR times with FOUR massively different numbers.
Continue...
* The rejected signatures of the first 33,000+ are checked at least FOUR times, twice by junior checkers and twice by master checkers. While the accepted signatures, which accounted for 89% of the signatures, are only counted ONCE.
* Husband and wife checkers, Roger and Valerie gave names to people associated with the signature campaign to confirm certain people signed the petition which is ILLEGAL.
* Rejected signatures are NOW going to get ANOTHER look because according to the secretary of state spokesperson voter registration wasn't "updated." Election officials say that 12% of those already rejected will put in the accepted pile. Meanwhile the accepted signatures will not be getting another look.
* David Ammons told people concerned with the lopsided checking of the signatures basically gay people ain't worth looking at the accepted signatures again. That election officials would only take a look at the already rejected ones.
Elections officials should have done a better job explaining the process at the beginning. The Twists and turns certainly to fuel doubts in the process. I am comforted that both sides have people of their choosing in the room monitoring the entire process.
There is certain to be at least some signatures that were initially accepted which are NOT valid. There is nothing in the process to catch that. This is a small built-in bias in the process.
How small? We don't know. The Elections Division office won't do a random check to find out the expected range for this type of error. They want to focus on finishing the initial check, so they're not doing any further special checks. They did one of 447 signatures which took about three person-days. They're understandably not interested in further delaying the results.
The anecdotal evidence about this rate is not comforting. Out of a sample of 222 accepted signatures hand-picked by our side, there was a 14% error rate. Since hand-picking does NOT give a random sample and is therefore NOT statistically valid, the real rate is likely MUCH, MUCH lower. But if the real rate is 10% of that, it's 1.4%--somewhere in the ballpark of 1700 signatures counted as valid that aren't.
Colin: I need to take issue with some of the characterizations you made.
I don't think that the Elections Division is "rigging" the process. Their job is to count the valid signatures. In general, they're doing a good job at that.
They are also doing this process in a MUCH more public fashion than ever before. It appears to me that didn't think through how to be open about their process and what numbers should be published when and how they should explain what's going on. Most of the misunderstandings have been because of that.
There are two areas where I have questions. One is about the lack of a second check for signatures accepted by the first checkerr--I've written about this elsewhere.
The second regards when the voter must be registered. The phrase used in the laws about petitions and referenda is usually "legal voter." There is no definition for this; it appears from the uses of "registered voter" that they're intended to be synonomous.
....next....
They have an obligation to count signatures of "legal voters" (probably meaning registered voters). It is illegal to sign a petition if you're not a "legal voter," presumably such a signature would be invalid.
(There is some possibility that "legal voter" means someone who is old enough and a resident long enough, but the interchangability of the terms in RCW 29A.72 (law around petitions) leads me to belive that they're synomyms. There may be case law about this, too.)
In any case, anyone who was a "legal voter" when they signed should be counted. That may be hard to determine: I'm not sure counties keep the registration dates. It appears that registration forms may not have a space for date signed, even. I don't think petition forms have a space for "date signed," either. The Elections Division is concerned about people who register the day they sign; I think that concern makes sense. That's why they're checking the the more up-to-date database.
...next...
None of this would matter if it wasn't really, really, really close. Frankly, we did a poor job trying to get people to decline to sign--nothing like the "bigot busters" in Hands Off Washington's successful 1994 campaign to keep I-608 and I-610 off the ballot. If we'd gotten serious about this, we wouldn't be biting our nails now.
Paul Johns, it is very easy to find 4% of the population who will sign just about anything. What is noteworthy is that the anti-equality crowd couldn't find enough signers to give themselves a safe signature cushion. We didnt' fail, they did. Monumentally.
the best way to know that everything that can be done is being done is to get involved personally in our campaign. Volunteer with WAFST.org (Washington Families Standing Together) and help us win!
Wow, over 800 duplicate signatures!! who would have thunk!
Decline to sign will now be yes on 71. I was confused at first, just like all those who were misled being told that signing the petition was the same as being in favor of gay marriage. Now, if it's on the ballot, it will be interesting getting glbti supporters to understand why they should vote yes on 71.
Paul Johns, I would actually argue that the fact it is so close shows a good job was done. You can't actually compare the effort to prevent R-71 to the Hands Off WA work on I-608 and 610. A referendum requires far fewer signatures to qualify for the ballot- if this was an initiative rather than a referendum, they wouldn't have qualified, period.
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