BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 882
Page 1
CONCURRENCE IN SENATE AMENDMENTS
AB 882 (Gordon)
As Amended August 5, 2014
Majority vote
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|ASSEMBLY: |76-0 |(April 25, |SENATE: |35-0 |(August 18, |
| | |2013) | | |2014) |
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Original Committee Reference: E. & R.
SUMMARY : Makes minor and technical changes to state law
governing elections. Specifically, this bill :
1)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.
2)Permits an elections official, when the official receives an
affidavit of voter registration that is missing information
that is needed in order to register the affiant to vote, to
obtain that missing information from the affiant by mail on
any document that is certified by the affiant under penalty of
perjury, as determined by the elections official, instead of
requiring the elections official to send the person a new
voter registration card to complete.
The Senate amendments add the provision detailed above dealing
with elections officials' processing of voter registration
affidavits that are missing information.
AS PASSED BY THE ASSEMBLY , this bill made the technical
correction to the process governing the verification of
signatures on a recall petition, as detailed above, but did not
include the other provision outlined above.
FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Senate Appropriations
Committee, pursuant to Senate Rule 28.8, negligible state costs.
COMMENTS : Existing law permits elections officials to use a
random sampling technique when verifying the signatures on
AB 882
Page 2
petitions in certain situations where officials are presented
with petitions with large numbers of signatures. 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 3% of the signatures on the section of
the petition, whichever is less. This is the only situation in
which the Elections Code establishes a 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. This bill 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 the
petition whenever examining a section of a petition for the
recall of a state officer.
The Senate amendments added a provision to this bill to permit
an elections official who receives an incomplete voter
registration application from a person to seek the missing
information by mail on any document that is signed under penalty
of perjury, instead of requiring the elections official to send
that person a new voter registration card. This process may
provide a more efficient way for elections officials to obtain
the missing information and to process the person's voter
registration application. This provision is substantially
similar to a provision in SB 361 (Padilla) of the current
legislative session, which is pending in the Assembly
Appropriations Committee.
Analysis Prepared by : Ethan Jones / E. & R. / (916) 319-2094
FN: 0004390
AB 882
Page 3