Ruling opens door to open space
Signatures from 2 counties are called valid
Open-space activists hailed the ruling as a victory, saying they now face a tight deadline to get the initiative language worked out in time for the election — a time crunch they say they hope to beat so voters can decide whether to increase the sales tax to fund open-space preservation.
Signature gatherers for the petition, sponsored by Utahns for Clean Water, Clean Air & Quality Growth, gathered what they thought was more than enough signatures statewide to put the issue before voters. But clerks in Cache and Utah counties invalidated signatures they said could not be verified because the addresses listed by signers on the petition did not match addresses of registered voters of the same name.
"The lack of an address match, standing alone, should not be grounds for rejection of the signature of a voter whose name appears on the voter list," said the court opinion ordering the names back for re-examination.
The state's new initiative law requires petitioners to gather a number of signatures equal to 10 percent of the votes cast statewide in the previous gubernatorial election. Further, it requires a similar 10 percent signature count in 26 of the state's 29 Senate districts. But the invalidated signatures left the petition 228 signatures short in a Cache County district and just two signatures short in a Utah County district.
When Utahns sign a petition, they must certify that they are registered to vote or that they intend to register. The signature gatherer must also certify that all signatures were collected from people they reasonably believed were registered or intended to register. To invalidate signatures, clerks had to presume that either signers or signature gatherers lied or were mistaken.
"In our view, this presumption is no more justified than the equally plausible circumstance that a registered voter has moved to a new address within the district between elections," the court wrote in its three-page opinion.
Also, the court worried that inconsistent verification standards from county to county create the "very real likelihood that a signature that would be certified by one county clerk could be rejected by another, thus creating disparities in the ability to participate in the initiative process among Utah voters statewide."
The court included a suggestion to the Legislature that it clarify the process to avoid future complications.
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