Ballot Measure Faces Legal Review
The attorney general is looking at initiative's wording discrepancies.
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer is reviewing apparent improprieties in the wording of an initiative used to qualify a redistricting measure for the Nov. 8 special election ballot.
In what proponents acknowledge was a mistake, wording on the document used to gather signatures was different from the text submitted to the attorney general's office to secure a title and summary for the measure.
Ted Costa, who launched the petition drive, said the discrepancies are minor and do not alter the substance of his initiative, which would overhaul how legislative and congressional boundaries are drawn.
"It's just a little bump in the road," he said. "There's always a concern when something like this comes up, but I'm not too worried. I feel this is the best-drafted initiative we've done."
Costa said he notified the secretary of state's office after discovering that the two documents were worded slightly differently about a month ago.
Nghia Nguyen Demovic, a spokeswoman for the secretary of state, said the agency subsequently asked Lockyer to review the matter.
The redistricting initiative, supported by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, calls for the drawing of political boundaries to be taken out of the Legislature's hands and given to a three-person panel of retired state or federal judges.
Lockyer's office, which recently received the request from the secretary of state's office, has not yet decided what action - if any - to take, spokesman Nathan Barankin said.
Lockyer has the legal authority to file a lawsuit seeking to drop redistricting from the Nov. 8 ballot, but no decision has been made to do so, Barankin said.
Barankin said it is no minor matter, however, to circulate an initiative different from the one submitted to obtain title and summary, which formally launches the signature-gathering process.
"I'm not sure it's relevant whether they think it's significant or minor," he said of Costa and other supporters of the initiative.
Voters solicited for signatures would have no way of knowing that changes had been made or what they were, Barankin said.
Questions also could be raised about the accuracy of the title and summary, since it was based on a document worded differently, Barankin said.
Attorney Dan Kolkey, representing Fair Districts Now, which supports the initiative, described the problem as a simple human error.
Proponents were polishing the proposed initiative in the days before submitting the measure to Lockyer's office for title and summary.
After receiving the title and summary, someone in Costa's office accidentally sent a previous version to the printer to be used in gathering signatures, Kolkey said.
The most significant differences occurred in the initiative's preamble, which expresses intent but does not detail mechanics of the redistricting proposal, Kolkey said.
Both documents made the same points, but used different words, he said.
Kolkey cited this example:
A sentence in the version used to gather signatures read, "Our Legislature should be responsive to the demands of the citizens of California, and not the self-interests of individual legislators or the partisan interests of political parties."
The same portion of the document used for title and summary read:
"Our Legislature should be responsive to the demands of the voters, but existing law places the power to draw the very districts in which voters are elected in the hands of incumbent state legislators, who then choose their voters, which is a significant conflict of interest."
Kolkey said most of the other discrepancies were stylistic and non-substantive - for example, both make the point that the judicial council shall create a pool of 24 retired judges to serve as candidates for the three-person redistricting panel.
But one document used the word "nominate" to describe what the judicial council must do, while the other document used the term "select," Kolkey said.
Both documents also mandate a 20-day selection process, during which legislative leaders can submit their preferences from the 24-person pool of judges and can exercise a challenge if they desire to strike a name from the candidates.
The two documents are consistent in mandating a 20-day selection process, but they differ by one day on when legislative leaders must exercise their prerogative under the initiative, Kolkey said.