On November 10, 2012, the Associated Press posted the article Group collects signatures to repeal Calif. transgender law. The article gives numbers related to the signature drive by the Privacy For All Students coalition’s effort to repeal the School Success and Opportunity Act (AB 1266).
Opponents of a new California law that gives transgender students certain rights say they have collected enough signatures for an initiative that would repeal the law.
Frank Schubert, the political strategist handling the signature gathering effort for conservative groups, said Sunday that the group submitted 620,000 signatures to get the initiative on the November 2014 ballot. To qualify, at least 505,000 valid signatures must be submitted.
BuzzFeed, in their article Opponents Of Calif. Transgender Student Protections Law Confident Repeal Effort Will Move Forward, added the following:
“As far as we are aware, this is the largest number of volunteer signatures ever submitted in a California referendum campaign,” Karen England of Capitol Resources Institute, a member of the PFAS executive committee, said in statement. But Masen Davis, executive director of the Transgender Law Center (TLC), said the 620,000 signatures submitted may not cut it in the end.
“We won’t know the final count of valid signatures for several weeks; however, based on prior referendum efforts in California, they likely needed to submit more than 620,000 signatures to qualify for the ballot,” Davis said. “No matter how this plays out, we will stand with our youth and their families and fight every effort to restrict their opportunity to succeed in school.”
Officials from California’s 58 counties have eight business days to tally the signatures, according to PFAS. In the coming weeks, they will work to verify the signatures, which could potentially shave down the number if the signatures sampled are proven to be invalid. Officials could also conduct a statewide review.
“The validity rate of volunteer signatures is considerably higher than those for a paid signature drive,” said Frank Schubert, an anti-LGBT political activist and campaign manager of the coalition. “Historically, elections officials invalidate a significant percentage of signatures but many of our volunteer petitions have a validity rate of over 90%. We will be completing our internal validity checks over the next few days, but we believe the referendum has a good chance of qualifying. It’s likely going to be very close one way or another.”