Petition cross-offs protested

Sponsors of a proposed ballot initiative to preserve open space want the Supreme Court to count the petition signatures of about 230 people they believe were "disenfranchised" because they moved.

Blake D. Miller, an attorney for petition sponsors Utahns for Clean Water, Clean Air & Quality Growth, told the high court Thursday that signature gatherers fell just short of the required number of signatures in two Senate districts but that it was because legitimate signatures were not counted.

He said clerks in Cache and Utah counties are "basically disenfranchising people who move" because they disqualified signatures when the name matched the name of a registered voter but the address did not match.

But attorneys for the counties and the state Attorney General's Office told justices clerks were just doing their jobs by making reasonable assumptions about signatures whose validity they could not verify.

Many of the names, they said, were common names — justices and attorneys used the hypothetical "John Smith" to frame their discussion — so clerks could not be certain the person who signed the petition was one of the people by the same name who was registered to vote.

"County clerks are in the best position" to verify signatures, and the elections statute should therefore be read to give them discretion in making difficult final calls, assistant state attorney general Mark E. Burns said.

The newly changed state initiative law, which allows citizens to put issues on the ballot via petition drives, requires petition sponsors to gather signatures of at least 10 percent of the voters statewide who voted in the most recent gubernatorial election. Beyond that, it also requires geographical diversity by requiring signatures equaling at least 10 percent of the gubernatorial votes in 26 of the state's 29 Senate districts.

The high court in April upheld that rewrite of the law, which formerly required geographical diversity based on counties rather than Senate districts, though it remains a controversial law.

Utahns for Clean Water, Clean Air & Quality Growth is not questioning the constitutionality of the initiative law, however. It is only asking for a clarification on how clerks are to handle the signature verification process.

The petition sponsors hope to ask voters in November whether a $150 million bond should be approved to preserve open space statewide and fund projects that protect water, air, wildlife habitat, agricultural land and community parks and trails.