County Council authorizes statistical sampling method for verifying signatures on initiative petitions

The Metropolitan King County Council today unanimously approved a method for counting petition signatures that would save the county thousands of dollars every time an initiative or referendum is submitted by the voters.

The measure, co-sponsored by Councilmembers Reagan Dunn, Jane Hague and Kathy Lambert, adopts a signature verification method similar to that used by the state of Washington.
 
“Today's unanimous approval of this legislation demonstrates a proven methodology for verifying signatures that will lower costs and speed up the verification process,” said Councilmember Hague. “This is a win-win for taxpayers and King County elections.”

“This method will make the verification process more streamlined, which will allow the Council more time to consider initiatives before the deadline for placing them on the ballot,” said Councilmember Lambert. “The current verification process is burdensome, costly and lengthy. We can and should speed up the process and reduce costs, without sacrificing accuracy, to provide more time for review and deliberation on the issues.”

The current practice of the county’s Records, Elections and Licensing Services Division is to verify 105 percent of required signatures for each initiative and referendum – by hand. In some cases this can be a lengthy process, taking up to seven weeks or more by signature verifiers.

Although the Elections Section is authorized by county code to verify signatures based on a random sample of signatures, that method needed to be approved by the King County Council.

The ordinance approved today authorizes the same statistical counting method outlined by the Washington Secretary of State. Based upon random sampling, the system counts until one hundred percent of valid signatures have been achieved. In cases of duplicate signatures, only the first valid signature would be counted.

Developed by a University of Washington professor, the counting method has been used successfully by the state of Washington to verify signatures for state ballot measures for close to three decades.

Read more about this legislation on the King County Council’s LEGISEARCH system. Type in “2007-0439“