California Secretary of State

Steve Peace, a former California budget director, had recently filed an initiative to end partisan elections in the state. He has now withdrawn it, according to the Secretary of State's office. I've contacted the firm listed as the contact point for the initiative, but no response.

That's today's California quote of the day from Democratic spinner extraordinaire Steve Maviglio. He's talking about Monday's supposed 5 p.m. deadline to remove a high-speed rail bond measure from the November ballot and replace it with a more carefully drafted bond on the same subject. The legislature, which is facing Gov. Schwarzenegger's threat to veto every bill that reaches his desk until there's a budget deal, failed to pull the switcheroo yesterday. But there may still be more time. Secretary of State Debra Bowen has set Saturday as a deadline for adding measures, but the problem in this case is that the measure being removed is scheduled to be in the voter guide. There is no precedent for removing a measure from the ballot that's already appeared in the guide sent to voters.

The California Secretary of State's office has added a great new feature to its pages on ballot initiatives: daily spreadsheet updates on signature verification. As instructed by press secretary Kate Folmar (whose journalistic work is badly missed here), I went to the web site, http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_j.htm#pending_sigs, and clicked on the link Random Sample next to each initiative that is pending signature verification.

The verification data on the initiaitve that would ban gay marriage is instructive. It shows that the initiative turned in more than 1.1 million signatures for random sampling. So far the verification rate is very good -- over 83 percent on more than 20,000 signatures that have been checked. If that rate holds, the measure should qualify easily for the November ballot. (In the signature biz, 70 percent). One other thing that this data shows--the outsized role that San Diego and Orange counties play in signature gathering. Only LA produces more signatures, and per capita, both counties far surpass their neighbor to the north.