The Mighty Pen

The Secretary of State announced today that they have a raw count of 137, 689 signatures on the R-71 petition. 120,557 valid signatures are needed to qualify referendum 71 for the ballot. Historically 18% of signatures are invalid for various reasons. The cushion for R-71 is 14.2 %, so we are still in the too close to call range. Because the margin is so close, the Secretary of State’s office will conduct a line by line review of the petition and will compare every signature against the voting record. If a signature does not match the voting record it will be disqualified. If there are duplicate signatures the duplicates will be removed.