Early Deadline Day for State Petitions

The Elections Office has a customer-friendly feature for those submitting petitions in an attempt to get their idea onto the ballot: early review partway through the signature gathering season, to give petitioners who think they have enough qualifiers to submit them and see if they need more. All campaigns seeking a November ballot line must meet the required number of signatures by July 7th, but if you make your threshhold by close of business on May 26, they'll count them for you before the deadline.

So far (there's about 4 hours left for new submissions), four petitioners have submitted the required number of prospective signatures for certification. They are:

• #14, "Guarantees Same Deductions As On Federal Return," has not the catchiest title yet, but it's got catchy money behind it--Loren Parks, who is bankrolling notorious petitioners Abner and Carol Bobo. They need about 75,000; they've gavin the SoS 86,000 to count.
  
  
• Another winningly titled effort from the Bobos (along with Russ Walker)--#24 "Districting of Judges"--needs 100,000 and purports to have 110,000.
  
  
• I've been ragging on the petitioner-submitted titles so far, because the next group to submit today call theirs the Government Can't Steal My Property And Give It To A Developer Act (#57). It's essentially a Kelo fallout case like the many that are being propagated across the country in the wake of the Kelo v New London Supreme Court decision: with passage, government could not convey land seized by eminent domain to private interests. If you're looking for the first lock to be on the ballot, this one is it: supporters have turned in over 116,000 signatures, needing only 75,000.
  
  
• Last to submit so far is #102, which seeks to force corporations to disclose their tax liability and asset information, in order to make sure they are paying required state taxes.

Quite often the petitioners don't get the certifications they're looking for from the verification sample, and have to go back out onto the streets (although I'd be shocked if the eminent domain measure didn't certify now). But given the number they've collected so far, by the final deadline you can guess that most if not all will eventually qualify.