[EL] obscure question

Tue Jul 31 02:28:22 PDT 2012

Starting in 2004, entire Oregon signature sheets have been tossed out 
(tens of thousands of them every cycle), even if the circulator 
correctly dates his own signature, if that date is not a one-time 
pristine flow of ink on paper.  As I noted in 
http://www.counterpunch.org/2004/09/28/how-democrats-kicked-nader-off-the-oregon-ballot:

    Another "unwritten rule" rejected any sheet having any correction
    whatever of the date on the circulator's signature. If the
    circulator made any slip of the pen in writing the date, Bradbury
    threw out all of the county-verified voter signatures on that sheet.
    If a circulator began to write a "7" for the day of the month,
    realizing the error, crossed it out and wrote an "8," the entire
    sheet was discarded, and Bradbury allowed absolutely no way for the
    circulator to correct such a slip of the pen. Banks accept checks
    with such "dating errors," but not Bradbury, even though there
    exists no statute or rule requiring that the date on a circulator's
    signature be the result of a pristine flow of ink on paper.

See also 
http://www.counterpunch.org/2004/09/10/oregon-judge-puts-nader-on-ballot. The 
Oregon Secretary of State also began implementing many other, similar 
unwritten rules to prevent voter signatures from counting.

Since 2007, the Oregon Secretary of State has disqualified voter 
signatures upon belief that someone other than the signor wrote the date 
next to the signature.  Here is the rule:

    (d) For any other reason the Elections Official determines from the
    face of the signature sheet that a person or persons other than the
    petition signers entered, altered, corrected, clarified or obscured
    any information about the person who signed the signature sheet,
    including the optional fields of printed name, residence address and
    date signed.

So, in Oregon, even if the full date is written, with the 2012, the 
signature does not count if the date is written (printed) in a style 
that looks different from the printing style of the residence address.  
This affords enormous discretion to elections personnel to invalidate 
voter signatures subjectively.

Dan Meek

	503-293-9021 	dan at meek.net <mailto:dan at meek.net>	866-926-9646 fax

On 7/30/2012 8:06 PM, Justin Levitt wrote:
I don't doubt that it happens ... and these sorts of rejections are 
likely unlawful under the materiality provision 
<http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1971> of the Civil Rights Act 
of 1964.

Also, decisions based on technicalities, like the ones that both Richard 
and Estelle raise, are in some ways the product of attempts to squeeze 
the discretion <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=37605> out of election 
administration.  Careful what you wish for.

Self-promotion alert: in a forthcoming article 
<http://ssrn.com/abstract=1477663>, I discuss both issues -- the 
materiality provision of the Civil Rights Act, and reorienting 
discretion in election law toward a materiality principle more generally.

Justin

On 7/30/2012 7:33 PM, Estelle Rogers wrote:
> I don't know about petition signatures specifically, but I can tell 
> you that voter registration applications have been rejected en masse 
> for similar technical and non-germane infirmities--e.g., filling it 
> out in pencil.
>
> Estelle H. Rogers, Esq.
> Legislative Director
> Project Vote
> 202-546-4173, ext. 310
>
> /The information contained in this email is confidential and may 
> contain proprietary information. It is meant solely for the intended 
> recipient(s). Access to this email by anyone else is unauthorized. If 
> you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, 
> distribution or any action taken or omitted in reliance on this, is 
> prohibited and may be unlawful./
>
>
>
>
>
> On Jul 30, 2012, at 10:05 PM, Richard Winger wrote:
>
> Today the Libertarian Party submitted 42,000 signatures to be on the 
> ballot in Pennsylvania.  The Elections office immediately examined all 
> the signatures and lined out all the signatures in which the signer 
> had not put "2012" in the date column.  In other words, one-third of 
> the signers (14,000) just put the month and day, but not the year.
>
> However, the state-printed form says at the bottom "Revised Jan. 
> 2012", and Pennsylvania law did not permit the petition to circulate 
> until February 2012.
>
> Does anyone happen to be aware of any precedents on whether signatures 
> on petitions are invalid, just because the form asks for the date and 
> the signer puts only the month and day but not the year?
>
> Pennsylvania requires 20,601 valid signatures this year.
>
> Richard Winger
> 415-922-9779
> PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147
>
> _______________________________________________
> Law-election mailing list
> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu 
> <mailto:Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu>
> http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Law-election mailing list
> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election

-- 
Justin Levitt
Associate Professor of Law
Loyola Law School | Los Angeles
919 Albany St.
Los Angeles, CA  90015
213-736-7417
justin.levitt at lls.edu
ssrn.com/author=698321

_______________________________________________
Law-election mailing list
Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20120731/6c1a9b01/attachment.html>