New day, new numbers and, for now, things looking better for Referendum 71

Thoe folks who delivered Referendum 71 petitions felt pretty good today as another batch of numbers came out from the Secretary of State that they liked.

It's a slow process and tomorrow the tide could turn the other way when another handful of signatures are completely vetted for accuracy..

To begin, a reminder of three key numbers:

137,689 signatures were turned in;
120,577 must be of registered voters to get the measure on the ballot
17,112 signatures can be invalid and the referendum still qualify

At the end of the day Friday, here's what had been accomplished:

35,296 signatures had been checked
31,199 had been approved
4.063 had been rejected
34 of them had more checks to be done

It appears from the Secretary of State's Web site the next good update will be posted online Tuesday.

Here's what David Ammons wrote on the department blog.

State election officials are revising and upgrading the reporting process for Referendum 71, hoping to provide a clearer picture of how the signature-checking process is unfolding. The first report with the new approach will debut Tuesday afternoon.

The plan is for a daily late-afternoon update that shows signature-checking results for each batch of petitions that have been completely checked, and then re-checked by a supervisor. Each batch has 15 petition sheets, with varying numbers of signatures.
The fluid nature of the signature-checking has made it difficult to make sense of daily “snapshots” and the daily rejection rates that were published previously.

As of Friday night, for instance, hundreds of initially rejected signatures have been reversed by the master checker and added to the accepted stack, often because the signer wasn’t initially found on the statewide voter data base, but was found upon closer check.