Hourly Update

Petition wording error may invalidate Prop. 200 vote

PHOENIX - Proposition 200 foes are trying to block tallying of the votes on the measure, charging that the vast majority of the petitions signed by Arizonans to put it on the ballot do not have the correct legal wording. Former Attorney General Grant Woods said a preliminary check of petitions shows that the initiative language attached to nearly nine out of 10 petitions says people would need to show proof of legal residency to obtain "public welfare benefits." But the original initiative request filed July 7, 2003, reads only "public benefits." More to the point, the ballot language sent to Arizonans so they could vote also does not have that word. Similarly, the petition filed includes an exception for "federally mandated benefits" which is not in most of the petitions. Based on those discrepancies, foes of Proposition 200 filed suit Friday asking Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Margaret Downie to de-certify the measure for the ballot. The lawsuit cites constitutional and statutory provisions which require all petition signatures "be attached to a full and correct copy of the title and text of the measure." "(This is) not a technicality, not a typo, not words transposed," said Woods. "They inserted the word welfare into public benefit to mislead the people signing the petitions to believe they were only talking about public welfare benefits." But Proposition 200 supporter Randy Pullen said that one-word difference, which he said "was probably an unintentional mistake," is irrelevant. "I don't think it substantively changes the meaning of the proposition whatever," he said. Pullen pointed out that the language in question would be inserted into the state's Welfare Code. A hearing is set for Wednesday afternoon. Attorney Chuck Blanchard who filed the suit acknowledged more than two million ballots already have been printed and some people already have voted. So he wants a judge to block state election officials from tallying and certifying the results for Proposition 200. That would mean that even if the measure passes - and recent polls have shown that supporters outnumber foes by margins of close to 2-1 - it would not become law. Proposition 200 backers are going to try to short-circuit the legal challenge over the question of whether that inserted word makes a legal difference. They will argue that the lawsuit, filed more than three months after the petitions were filed, is legally too late. Woods said the delay is justifiable. He said when initiative foes went to check the signatures, the petitions with the ballot language already had been separated. "You'd have to ask for them separately," he said. "There's no reason for anybody to question whether or not the language on the petitions matched the language that is on the ballot," Woods continued. "It's never happened before that someone would have pulled this sort of chicanery." That question arose only last week when, during a debate between supporters and opponents, copies of the wrong version were being handed out. Kathy McKee, organizer of the Protect Arizona Now initiative, said at the time that she had inadvertently picked up some copies of an earlier version to take to the debate. But she said the petitions circulated match the submitted language. On Friday, informed of the problem, McKee could only say she did not know what happened. Woods had another reason for not looking for the problem until now. He said he presumed that Secretary of State Jan Brewer and her staff would have reviewed the full petitions when they were submitted to her in July. Brewer said her job is solely to throw out facially invalid petition signature sheets and to send random samples of the remaining signatures to county recorders for verification. She said state law leaves it up to any group interested in challenging initiatives to check the language and file a legal challenge. But attorney Chuck Blanchard, who filed Friday's suit for the anti-200 committee, said state law specifically requires the secretary of state to discard "those (signature) sheets not attached to a copy of the title and text of the measure." Blanchard said incorrect copies of the initiative do not comply with the law. McKee speculated part of the problem stems from the fact that an outside group, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, had decided to gather signatures itself using its own staff and paid circulators. That followed a split over philosophies and money. She said FAIR may have copied the wrong version for its circulators. But Pullen, who has been associated with the separate pro-200 campaign, said all the petitions came from McKee.