Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
On August 16, 2013, Judge James E. Marner ruled in the case of Yolanda Parker et al. v. City of Tucson et. al. (C20134029), the lawsuit to challenge the sufficiency of the initiative petitions filed by the
Committee for Sustainable Retirement, the local front group for ballot
initiative activist Paul Jacob and the
Liberty Initiative Fund.
You can read the 13 page ruling
Here (.pdf).
Long story short, Judge Marner is striking a number of the petitions submitted as invalid for the reasons stated in his ruling. The Tucson City Clerk is ordered to remove these invalid petition sheets and to recalculate the number of signatures eligible for verification and submit the appropriate number of signatures in the form of random sample to the Pima County Recorder's Office for determination of an error rate as mandated by A.R.S. §19-121.01. The Tucson City Clerk shall accomplish this by no later than August 23, 2013.
Upon receipt of the newly calculated error rate, the Tucson City Clerk will recalculate the projected number of valid signatures as mandated by A.R.S. §19-121.01 and certify the initaitve as either qualified or disqualified to appear on the ballot.
Counsel for the Tucson City Clerk is to file a Notice to the Court and notify all parties. Any additional pleadings must be filed by August 30, 2013.
It appears from the ruling that there is some measure of doubt as to whether this initiative will have enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot. Stay tuned.
