BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 882
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Date of Hearing: April 9, 2013
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON ELECTIONS AND REDISTRICTING
Paul Fong, Chair
AB 882 (Gordon) - As Introduced: February 22, 2013
SUBJECT : Recall elections: state officers: signature
verification.
SUMMARY : Makes a technical correction to 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 three percent of the
signatures submitted or 500 signatures, whichever is greater,
instead of verifying the lesser of the two amounts.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Establishes a procedure for the recall of state officers.
2)Requires a section of a petition for the recall of a state
officer to be filed with the elections official of the county
for which it was circulated.
3)Provides that, upon each submission of a section of a petition
for the recall of a state officer to a county elections
official, the official shall count the number of signatures on
the section and submit those results to the Secretary of
State. Provides that if 500 or more signatures are submitted,
the elections official may verify, using a random sampling
technique, either three percent of the signatures submitted,
or 500 signatures, whichever is less.
4)Requires elections officials, when using a random sampling
technique to determine the number of valid signatures on a
petition for the recall of a local officer, to examine at
least 500 signatures or five percent of the signatures,
whichever is greater.
5)Requires elections officials, when using a random sampling
technique to determine the number of valid signatures on the
nomination papers for a candidate who is running using the
independent nomination process, to examine at least 500
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signatures or five percent of the signatures, whichever is
greater.
6)Requires elections officials, when using a random sampling
technique to determine the number of valid signatures on a
petition for a state initiative or referendum, to examine at
least 500 signatures or three percent of the signatures,
whichever is greater.
7)Requires elections officials, when using a random sampling
technique to determine the number of valid signatures on a
petition for a county, city, or district initiative, to
examine at least 500 signatures or three percent of the
signatures, whichever is greater.
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown. State-mandated local program; contains
reimbursement direction.
COMMENTS :
1)Purpose of the Bill : According to the author:
Under existing law, the various provisions addressing
requirements for qualifying a recall for a ballot are
inconsistent. If fewer than 500 signatures for a
recall petition are submitted to the county elections
official, he or she shall count the number of
signatures and, for state officers, submit those
results to the Secretary of State. This bill would
reconcile the inconsistency between standards for
random sampling for a state officer's recall so that
it is consistent with the process in place for local
recalls, the general petition verification law, and
local ballot measures.
2)Random Sampling : 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
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the petition. Because this technique only provides a
projection of the number of valid signatures on the petition,
rather than an actual hard count of the number of valid
signatures, 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. If
the number of signatures that are projected to be valid is
neither significantly more nor significantly less than the
number of signatures required on the petition in question,
elections officials generally are required to determine the
validity of each signature on the petition before making a
final determination whether the petition contains a sufficient
number of signatures. In situations where the random sampling
technique projects that the number of signatures on the
petition is significantly higher than the number of signatures
required on the petition, the petition is deemed to have a
sufficient number of signatures without the need for a full
examination, and if the random sampling results in a
projection that the number of signatures is significantly
lower than the number needed, the petition is deemed to have
an insufficient number of signatures without the need for a
full examination. By avoiding 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 in which existing law provides for a random
sampling process for verifying signatures on petitions, the
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. As a
general rule, this policy means that petitions with a larger
number of signers will have a larger number of signatures
chosen for verification as part of the random sampling
process.
However, in the case of petitions for the recall of a state
officer, for any petition that has 500 signatures or more,
existing law provides that the elections official must examine
either 500 signatures or three percent of the signatures on
the section of the petition, whichever is less . This is the
only situation in which the Elections Code establishes a
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standard where an official using a random sampling technique
would base the number of signatures that needed to be verified
on the lesser of the two numbers. This appears to be a
technical error in the statute. Otherwise, existing law would
require an elections official to verify every signature on a
petition section that contained 499 signatures, but would only
require 15 signatures to be verified on a petition with 500
signatures. Similarly, the existing statute would require an
elections official to examine 500 signatures on a section of a
petition whether that section had 17,000 signatures on it, or
100,000 signatures on it.
This bill corrects this apparent technical error by providing
that elections officials must examine the greater of 500
signatures or three percent of the signatures on the section
of the petition whenever examining a section of a petition for
the recall of a state officer.
3)Previous Legislation : This bill is identical to the
introduced-version of AB 2080 (Gordon) of 2012. That version
of AB 2080 was approved by the Assembly on a 74-0 vote, but AB
2080 subsequently was gutted-and-amended and used for another
purpose.
Among other provisions, AB 2088 (Adams) of 2010, contained a
provision that was substantively identical to this bill
regarding the use of random sampling to verify signatures on a
petition for the recall of a state officer. AB 2088 was
vetoed by Governor Schwarzenegger due to the other, unrelated
provisions of that bill.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
Secretary of State Debra Bowen (sponsor)
Opposition
None on file.
Analysis Prepared by : Ethan Jones / E. & R. / (916) 319-2094
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