As Dave Ammons mentioned in his blog post yesterday, the Referendum 71 signature checkers have been doing a “recent registration check” for signatures that had been rejected because they weren’t found in the copy of the state voter database used for checking signatures. Because the checkers have been working off the version of the database used to check the Initiative 1033 sigs earlier this summer, new voters who registered in July and signed a referendum petition sheet didn’t appear in the copy of the database . The “recent registration check” will help find registrations for those petition signers who registered to vote in July.  

The recent registration check started earlier this week. Thursday night at 10 p.m., the checkers had finished doing the recent registration check on the first 160 batches of petitions. In the first 3½ days of the check a total of 443 (or 12.7 percent) of the 3,501 signatures not found on the first check or by a master checker have been moved to the “accepted” category. Another two names were found to be duplicates, and three other names might be added to the “accepted” list if readable signature images can be provided by the county where the signer indicated he/she lives.      

The referendum’s rejection rate for these 160 volumes had been 10.44 percent before the recent registration check began. Now, with the 443 names being transferred to the “accepted” category, the rejection rate for the 160 batches is 9.27 percent.