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Court of Appeal:
Election Officials Arbitrarily Voided Signatures for Measure
Opinion Says Minor Misspellings, Improper Abbreviations in Addresses Do Not Justify Interfering With Signers’ Right to Participate in Initiative Process, Drawing Dissent
By Kimber Cooley, associate editor
Div. One of the Fourth District Court of Appeal, in a divided opinion, has held that election officials in San Diego acted arbitrarily in rejecting 98 signatures in support of placing an initiative on the ballot for the November 2024 general election due to slight misspellings, single-letter illegibility, or use of abbreviations not recognized by the postal service on the listed home addresses of supporters, contributing to the disqualification of the measure.
At issue is Elections Code §105, which provides:
“For purposes of verifying a signature on an initiative,…the elections official shall determine that the residence address on the petition or paper is the same as the residence address on the affidavit of registration. If the addresses are different…the affected signature shall not be counted as valid.”
Thursday’s majority opinion, authored by Justice David M. Rubin and joined in by Justice Truc T. Do, declared:
“Such irregularities will not automatically disqualify a signature if the signer’s voter registration record can be located and their identity as a registered voter is verifiable by comparing the information in the petition with the information in the voter registration record.”
Rubin acknowledged that “this controversy is technically moot” in light of the election having already passed, and local rules that would require the petitioners to obtain new signatures before requesting that the initiative appear on a future ballot, but said that the court was justified in hearing the matter because “this case presents an issue of public interest on matters requiring uniform application of the law throughout the state.”
Presiding Justice Terry B. O’Rourke dissented, arguing that the statutory language in §105 is clear that what is listed on the petition must be the “same” as the signer’s registered home address.
Proposed Initiative
The petition was circulated in 2022 by the San Diego Public Library Foundation and the San Diego Parks Foundation. It was in support of a proposed initiative to raise additional funding for facilities within the city.
More than 111,000 signatures were submitted to City Clerk Diana Fuentes for verification before the November 2024 election.
Fuentes passed the petition on to Registrar Cynthia Paes for authentication of the signatures. Using a random sample of three percent of the total signatures, as authorized under the Elections Code, the registrar determined that out of the 3,336 signatures selected for review, only 2,201 were valid.
Based on a projection analysis, the office declared that the total number of authenticated signatures would be 72,285, fewer than the 82,566 required to qualify the initiative for the ballot or to trigger a full count.
The foundations filed a petition for a writ of mandate and complaint for injunctive and declaratory relief, seeking a finding that the initiative was properly supported.
They also asserted that the city used the wrong election date for calculating the number of signers needed to qualify for the ballot—a quantity based on a percentage of registered voters, as provided for in a municipal code section governing voter-approved measures—pointing out that officials used voter rolls for the November 2020 general election even though 2022 records contain lower numbers.
San Diego Superior Court Judge Marcella O. McLaughlin found that the city properly selected the 2020 numbers as the baseline for calculating the required number of signatures and that the petitioners fell short of the threshold needed to trigger a full count by 185. Even assuming that some of the signatures were improperly invalidated, she reasoned that the foundations could not reach the necessary number.
First Amendment Rights
On appeal, the petitioners argued that the city infringed on voters’ First Amendment rights to participate in the initiative process by invalidating hundreds of signers based on minor discrepancies. Rubin explained:
“Specifically, they challenged respondents’ decisions regarding 267 signers, in five separate categories: (1) street name misspelling or handwriting (98 signers); (2) street name improper abbreviation (10 signers); (3) admitted registrar errors (5 signers); (4) obvious errors in voter dating (13 signers); and (5) circulator dating errors (141 signers).”
Acknowledging that “[c]ourts have consistently underscored the importance of protecting this right, recognizing it as a vital element of democracy,” Rubin considered each of the five categories of challenged signatures. He noted that, as to the address mistakes, the registrar invalidated signers for errors such as writing “Creeekwood” rather than “Creekwood” and for abbreviations like “Mtn” to refer to “Mountain.”
Agreeing with the foundations that the city used a “hyper-technical” methodology, the jurist remarked:
“Respondents’ strict approach…fails to account for natural variations in a person’s handwriting due to age, illness, or the hurried circumstances under which petitions are often signed—such as in front of a store or on a street corner—compared to writing done in a more controlled setting. This approach would also disenfranchise less educated voters who might spell a street address phonetically. Further, this overly technical approach could exclude legally registered voters with certain disabilities such as dyslexia, or individuals with poor handwriting.”
He continued:
“Moreover, the purpose of comparing information written on a petition with that contained in voter registration records is to determine whether signers were registered voters on the date they signed the petition….The central issue is whether this purpose can be accomplished without letter-for-letter and word for-word matches between information written on a petition with that contained in voter registration records.”
Limited Case Law
Rubin noted that “[w]hile there is limited case law on this issue, existing precedents do not support the strict interpretation urged by respondents,” and commented that “the duty of election officials is ministerial not ‘mechanical.’ ” He said:
“In sum, misspelled addresses, illegible handwriting, or using nonstandard abbreviations does not automatically invalidate a signature where the signer’s voter registration record can be located and the identity of the signer as a registered voter can be established by comparing the signature on the petition with the signatures the Registrar has on file for the voter. Although it is possible that, even after reviewing both the petition and the affidavit of registration, an election official may be unable to validate a signature due to factors such as illegibility, misspellings, or nonstandard abbreviations, that specific question is not before us.”
As to the dating errors, he agreed with the city that the signatures must be invalidated, writing:
“The rejection of signatures that do not comply with San Diego Municipal Code requirements [that the signers date their signatures] cannot be characterized as a clerical error….By requiring a voter to date their signature, an examination of the voter rolls can easily confirm whether the voter was a registered voter at the time the petition was signed. Disregarding this requirement would be contrary to the express intent of the City’s legislative body, and amounts to amending the municipal code, which is beyond the judicial competence.”
He also found that the use of November 2020 voter rolls was proper, as they represented the registration records available at the time the foundations filed their notice of intent to circulate the initiative petition.
O’Rourke’s View
O’Rourke wrote:
“I concur with the majority’s conclusions concerning the proper general election date and the disqualification of 154 signatures due to date errors. However, I respectfully dissent with the majority’s holding concerning the decision to reject signatures due to nonmatching residence addresses.”
Accusing the majority of disregarding the plain meaning of the statutory language, he said:
“Here, the majority is reading out section 150’s procedures from the scheme. The statute is unambiguous: The word ‘same’ means ‘identical.’ ”
He also said that the court’s opinion relied on speculative assumptions, adding:
“The majority criticizes the Registrar’s approach to comparing information on the petition with a signer’s registration record as overly strict or technical, and failing to account for how individuals typically sign petitions….But the record is devoid of any evidence of how any of these 98 signatures were collected or signed, or the circumstances of the individuals whose signatures were rejected. The majority’s reasoning rests on speculation as to these matters.”
Continuing, he argued:
“By their decision, the majority is putting a burden on election officials to go beyond their ministerial duty and the law, and either make assumptions or conduct research outside the relevant documents. Accordingly, I dissent from the majority’s conclusions in this regard.”
The case is San Diego Public Library Foundation v. Fuentes, 2025 S.O.S. 1461.
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