Our Elections Division has counted the signatures for Tim Eyman’s latest initiative, I-1185.  The tax limiting effort contained 320,003 signatures, well above the 241,153 required to qualify for the statewide ballot.  The total also exceeds the 25 percent buffer over the minimum signatures that elections officials suggest campaigns collect to account for invalid signatures, including duplicates, signatures from people who aren’t registered and signatures that don’t match the signature in the voter registration record.

As their next step, elections staff will check a 3 percent random sample (9,600 signatures) of the signatures submitted.  Random sample checks are conducted when the sponsor submits enough signatures over the minimum that the state can be 99 percent confident the results of the sample check would match the results of a 100% check.  The random sample check is expected to start on Monday, July 16.  The 9,600 signatures in the sample will be compared against a current copy of the state voter rolls.

Despite I-1185 being submitted after the charter schools initiative, I-1240, the Elections Division has switched the order in which it will check the measures due to the latter having a higher number of petitions, resulting in a slower path through the Secretary of State’s petition imaging process. I-1185 which re-affirms a two-thirds vote requirement for the state Legislature to raise taxes, may be the fifth proposal to qualify for the General Election, making for a lively ballot this fall that already includes R-74 (marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples) and I-502 (marijuana decriminalization).  There are two constitutional amendments on the ballot as well.

The I-1240 sponsors said they submitted an estimated 350,000 signatures. They turned in 20,569 petitions. I-1240 is expected to undergo a 3 percent sample check starting around July 23.