From Secretary of State’s Office Communications Director David Ammons (Psst, it’s his birthday today, too, according to Facebook):
FYI: Secretary of State Sam Reed has signed paperwork certifying Referendum 71 to the November statewide ballot. It had a scant 1,430-signature margin, possibly the slimmest margin in state history for a measure making the ballot. The error rate was 11.51 percent, the third lowest in the past 20 years; the average error rate in the past two decades is 18.5 percent.
The Secretary of State’s Office has a new blog post up on the certification, right here.
September 2nd, 2009 at 12:57 PM
What kind of backroom deal is this? How can Reed certify the Referendum when there’s a court order keeping the petition signers names secret? A petition is a public document. If the names are secret the petition is invalid.
September 2nd, 2009 at 7:20 PM
Okay, so the court hearing earlier today included the judge being so concerned about the “thousands of invalid signatures,” and the actual number is 1430? This sounds like a very lame attempt to throw the referendum out.
Did Dave Ammons used to be an Oly correspondent for somebody? The name’s familiar.
Steve — Huh? All the rulings to date are that the signers names are (or are going to be) public. Even when they weren’t yet public, the SecState’s office was able to process them for validity. The validity of the petition is a legal question that will be determined by court, since it’s going to be challenged on any lame premise its opponents can think of.
September 2nd, 2009 at 7:25 PM
Blain, yes, Ammons was with the AP. He’s definitely missed in the reporter’s corps, but he also is doing a pretty great job with the SecState. They’re one of the most responsive, informative, entertaining spokescrews we have for the state. They’ve really done a pretty good job embracing new media like blogs, MySpace, etc. They’re ahead of basically every state agency in that regard and probably most local jurisdictions, too, for that matter. I don’t think Ammons did all of that, but he was a great addition to their crew.
September 2nd, 2009 at 7:47 PM
Thanks. If he used to share an office with Bob Partlow at the White House, I might have met him back in the day. But, yeah, I’m sure it was his byline I was remembering. Glad to know somebody in the State government is doing something smart, but hope they don’t get the wrath of being the clean spot on the wall.