Sec. of State: Petition signatures a problem

• Signatures

This photo taken Friday shows a signature page from an initiative petition that calls for strengthening the rights of North Dakota farmers and ranchers to run their operations as they see fit. North Dakota Secretary of State Al Jaeger said petition signers should be required to print their names as well as sign them, because some signatures are illegible and difficult to verify.

Talk about it

BISMARCK (AP) — Verifying more than 130,000 signatures on five proposed ballot measures is difficult when some names are illegible, said Secretary of State Al Jaeger, who believes signers should also be required to print their names on initiative petitions.

“We’re supposed to determine the sufficiency (of a petition) before it goes on the ballot,” Jaeger said. “When we can’t read a signature ... that is harder to do.”

Initiative petitions are used to bypass the North Dakota Legislature and put proposals for state laws and constitutional amendments directly to a statewide vote.

To qualify, an initiated law needs the signatures of almost 13,500 North Dakota voters. A constitutional amendment needs about 27,000 names.

Workers in Jaeger’s office are reviewing five proposed measures for possible inclusion on the November ballot, including a ban on smoking in public workplaces, felony penalties for cruelty to dogs, cats and horses, and legalization of marijuana as a pain reliever.

The petitions have more than 134,000 signatures, Jaeger said Thursday. “It’s a lot to go through,” he said.

Petition signers are required to list their addresses as well as their names. The information is used to send postcards to a random sampling of petition signers to ask them if their signatures were genuine.

However, many of the signatures are illegible or difficult to read, which slows the review process and makes it more difficult to draw a random sample of names for verification, Jaeger said.

“If we are not able to determine who the person is, that brings into question whether in fact we’ve made a sampling that we can go by,” Jaeger said. “That is a concern of mine.”

The secretary of state said he is likely to ask the Legislature next year to require petition signers to also print their names.

Tags: al jaeger, news, signatures, petition, verify