BILL ANALYSIS                                                                                                                                                                                                    Ó



                                                                  AB 2080
                                                                  Page  1

          Date of Hearing:   April 18, 2012

                        ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
                                Felipe Fuentes, Chair

                AB 2080 (Gordon) - As Introduced:  February 23, 2012 

          Policy Committee:                              ElectionsVote:6-0 
          (Consent)

          Urgency:     No                   State Mandated Local Program: 
          Yes    Reimbursable:              Yes

           SUMMARY  

          This bill corrects an inconsistency in current election law 
          regarding the process governing the verification of signatures 
          on a recall petition.  Specifically, this bill provides that if 
          500 or more signatures are submitted to an elections official on 
          a petition for the recall of a state officer, the elections 
          official may verify, using a random sampling technique, either 
          3% of the signatures submitted or 500 signatures, whichever is 
          greater, instead of verifying the lesser of the two amounts.

           FISCAL EFFECT  

          Negligible fiscal impact, as the bill is consistent with 
          historical practice and advice from the Secretary of State's 
          (SOS's) Office.

           COMMENTS  

           Background and Purpose  . Existing law permits elections officials 
          to use a random sampling technique when verifying the signatures 
          on petitions in certain situations where officials are presented 
          with petitions with large numbers of signatures.  Under this 
          technique, officials select a specified number of signatures 
          from the petition at random, check the validity of those 
          signatures, and based on that check of a small number of 
          signatures, project the total number of valid signatures on the 
          petition. Existing law generally provides that the results of a 
          random sample of signatures can only be substituted for a full 
          verification of all signatures on the petition when the 
          projected number of signatures is either significantly above or 
          significantly below the number of signatures needed. By avoiding 








                                                                  AB 2080
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          the need to examine every signature on every petition filed with 
          an elections official, the random sampling technique can 
          significantly reduce the time and expense associated with 
          verifying signatures on petitions.

          In almost every case where random sampling is allowed, existing 
          law requires the elections official to verify either a certain 
          number of signatures, or a certain percentage of the total 
          number of signatures submitted, whichever is larger. In the case 
          of petitions for the recall of a state officer, however, for any 
          petition that has 500 signatures or more, existing law provides 
          that the elections official must examine either 500 signatures 
          or 3% of the signatures on the section of the petition, 
          whichever is less. AB 2080, sponsored by the SOS, corrects this 
          apparent technical error by providing that elections officials 
          must examine the greater of 500 signatures or 3% of the 
          signatures on the section of such petitions.

           Analysis Prepared by  :    Chuck Nicol / APPR. / (916) 319-2081