In blockbuster democracy, there are always invalid signatures. People don't sign their own names. Forgery by gatherers can be a problem. Sometimes, people's signatures change over time, and no longer match registration cards filed decades ago. Or people mistakenly leave out part of their address, or sign on a petition from the wrong county. Some problems are to be expected. When initiative petition signatures are checked, about 70 percent of signatures will prove to be valid -- if the signature gathering operation was well run.

But in Arizona, the signature gathering efforts for multiple measures appear to have failed to meet that standard. According to the Arizona Republic, three measures appear to be in trouble. Two of them, one involving real estate transfers and another involving conservation, appear to have fallen short. A third, a transportation initiative, had so few valid signatures that it has failed to make the ballot. In random sampling, an estimated 42 percent of the signatures were invalid, suggesting that the people handling the gathering failed to do their job. Arizona's Secretary of State said that this was "among the largest overall invalid rates that I can recall ever seeing from a citizens initiative drive.” The initiative won't be on the ballot.

One excuse offered by petition circulators there; the counties and state may be slow in processing new voter registrations. Here's the background: when signature gatherers approach somebody who is not registered to vote, they often have them register on the spot, then sign the initiative petitions. If the initiative petitions are processed before voters are registered there could be a problem. There may be such a problem, but it's hard to imagine that would account for such a low validity rate. Having that many bad signatures suggests a deeper problem -- a problem broad enough to warrant investigation by legal authorities.