TIME is Running Out.

On July 17th, I broke the story that the Governor's TIME initiative may not have enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.

The first test is the initial vetting that occurs at the Secretary of State's Office.  Here's what I wrote on the 17th.

TIME needs 153,365 valid signatures and they turned in 258,342.  The Secretary of State goes through the petitions and discards ones that are obviously bad and then turns the rest in to the Counties for verification.  This initial vetting can eliminate thousands of signatures.

If TIME's filing rounds down to around 250,000 then they can tolerate at 38% failure rate.  Chances are they will still make it, but I'm sure that they are sweating.

Since I wrote that paragraph, the Secretary of State's office has conducted the initial vetting and my number was way too conservative.  My guess was that they would lose about 8,000 signatures in the initial cut.  The actual answer is that the Secretary of State threw out nearly 20,000 signatures that were facially invalid (eg. the circulator didn't sign the back of the petition, or it wasn't notarized.)

So now TIME has only turned in 238,874 signatures and they can tolerate a 35% failure rate.  That's going to be tight. 

It was the Tribune that broke the story of the behind the scenes machinations that got TIME in trouble.

Gov. Janet Napolitano eliminated key elements of a major transportation initiative this week, agreeing not to tax homebuilders in exchange for their support and $100,000 to kick-start the campaign.

I pointed out in the previous post that TIME got into a spitting match with the Homebuilder's Association and REJECTED 18,000 signatures that the Homebuilders collected on TIME's behalf.  Those signatures would have virtually guaranteed that TIME would have made ballot. 

But TIME's "secret deal" with the Homebuilders caused additional problem.  They got a late start. The Tribune article is dated May 10th and it took TIME another few weeks or so to get all the petitions into the field.

The quality of the signatures decreases as the collection period progresses.  If TIME turned in 238,874 signatures that were collected in March, April and May, then they would have a better shot.  But most of TIME's signatures were collected after June 1st. 

My guess is that TIME will end up in the "mandatory count" range.  That is, the random sample will indicate that the number of valid signatures is between 95% and 105% of the required amount.

At that point, it will be up to the lawyers.  I will say one thing.  The Governor has good lawyers. 

 

Comments

[Big Sister]

What will Marty do with his TIME if this doesn't make the ballot? Put his huge money (our APS bills put to good use) and influence (or fear mongering) to stick it to us in every other way he possibly can, all the while wrapping it in a shiny package and lovely card wishing us well. I can hear the sarcasm in his voice now as he brags about how he pulled off another one! Let them eat cake…..

We should all see the priorities of this egotistical troll; raise OUR taxes thru the TIME initiative while lowering the taxes of APS but doing nothing for ours thru the school consolidation effort. (Don’t fall for the old line that it will improve dollars in the classroom; since when did big government mean more efficient?) Oh yea, we can't forget his support for the trust land theft, they call it conservation, with the right-of way options being the boot we will never see in public.

[Ron]

Sister, there is less and less reason to be voting "yes" on any of the Props in this Novembers ballot - this will be fastest ballot filling time I have had in years....

[Patrick]

Right! Make things simple: NO on everything! Even the things you might like -- i.e. Defense of Marriage -- are unnecessary (superfluous law). NO on EVERYTHING!

[Jack]

No on everything. Good call. Except....