North Dakota petition signature threshold bumped for pending initiatives
March 25, 2011
BISMARCK, North Dakota: In mid-March officials announced that pending initiatives will be required to collect more signatures than previously estimated due to updates from the 2010 federal census.[1]
In late December 2010 officials confirmed that petition signatures for ballot initiatives would in fact increase. However, it remained unclear if the new requirement applied to currently circulating petitions. According to the U.S. Census Bureau the state of North Dakota had 672,591 residents on April 1, 2010, a 4.7 percent increase from the 2000 count of 642,200 people.[2] In the last decade, initiative and referendum laws in the state required at least 12,844 valid petition signatures in order to qualify initiated state statutes or veto referenda. Initiated constitutional amendments, on the other hand, required 25,688 valid signatures.[3]
On March 24 both Secretary of State Al Jaeger and Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem confirmed that the new census numbers affect currently circulating petitions. To qualify for the ballot, an initiated state statute needs a number of signatures equal to 2% (13,452) of North Dakota's population. A initiated constitutional amendment requires a signature total that equals 4% (26,904) population.[1]
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