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I-1100 is First to Make Ballot

Article by Erik Smith. Published on Monday, July 12, 2010 EST.

Secretary of State’s Office Finishes Signature Count and Certifies Measure – Workers’ Comp Measure is Next

 



By Erik Smith

Staff writer/ Washington State Wire

UPDATED 7:30 a.m. July 13 with I-1100 certification.

OLYMPIA, July 12.—State elections officials certified one liquor-store initiative for the fall ballot, and they’re starting the signature-check on the others.

            Six initiatives submitted petitions July 2, and state officials are going through the normal process of verifying signatures to assure each made the threshold required for a spot in the ballot. Each initiative needs 241,153 valid signatures from registered voters. Because all of the campaigns turned in more than 300,000 signatures, all are expected to survive the signature-check.

            State officials do their checks one at a time, and because I-1100 was the first to turn in signatures, it was the first to be checked. The initiative is the retailer-backed ballot measure that would junk the state liquor-store system and allow hard-liquor sales by merchants who have beer and wine licenses. The initiative has been financed largely by Costco Wholesale, the Issaquah-based big-box chain.

            Because the campaign turned in nearly 400,000 signatures, state officials were able to verify signatures with a relatively quick random sampling, rather than checking each one. Of the 12,124 signatures sampled, 10,835 were found to be valid, an 89 percent validity rate. 

            Secretary of State Sam Reed certified I-1100 for the ballot Monday — the final step in the process.
            The next initiative to be checked will be Initiative 1082, the workers’ comp measure backed by the Building Industry Association of Washington.


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