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PHOENIX — Backers of a proposal to increase state sales taxes for transit projects, including a Tucson-Phoenix rail link, did not submit enough valid signatures to get the plan on the ballot, Secretary of State Jan Brewer said Monday.

Brewer said petitions with about 260,000 names were submitted. But just 138,451 of those were determined to be valid after all the petitions were screened and a random check of the veracity of signatures performed, she said.

Backers need 153,365 to put any proposal to change state law before voters in November.

Brewer said the 42 percent error rate found by county recorders — names and addresses on petitions that did not match voter rolls — was "the largest overall invalid rate that we've seen in Arizona."

She the error frequency on the petitions, and high error rates in some other ballot measures this year, may be due to the widespread use of circulators in initiative campaigns who are paid based on the number of signatures they get.

"That often leads to fraud; it often leads to additional errors," she said.

A lawsuit already is in the works to persuade a judge to overrule Brewer and declare there are sufficient legally acceptable signatures to ask voters to increase state sales taxes from the current 5.6 cents on every dollar spent to 6.6 cents.

Attorney Charles Blanchard said he believes Brewer's office improperly rejected some petitions. He also contends Maricopa County, where most of names were rejected, failed to count the signatures of some people who have moved but were still registered to vote at another address.

But Maricopa County Elections Director Karen Osborne said she has done no such thing.

Proposition 203 is designed to raise $42.6 billion during the next 30 years. More than half would be earmarked for freeways and other state highways that will be identified as priorities, with cities, counties and tribes dividing up another $8.5 billion in revenues to spend on their own priorities.

There also would be cash for bikeways, scenic roads and protecting neighborhoods. And it has more than $7.6 billion for mass transit, with the lion's share of that designated for proposed passenger rail service from Tucson to Phoenix and possibly beyond.

Because of a quirk in state law, Blanchard doesn't need to convince a judge that there are 153,365 valid signatures on the petitions. If he can show the figure, based on that random sample, would reach 95 percent of that, the measure would be placed before voters because there is insufficient time for each county to check each and every one of the signatures submitted.

That legal challenge has the backing of Gov. Janet Napolitano, an outspoken supporter of the plan. Gubernatorial press aide Jeanine L'Ecuyer noted that 260,000 signatures were submitted.

"The will of the people is pretty clear," she said. "They want it on the ballot."

The question of whether the petitions had enough valid signatures might have been avoided if Tom Ziemba, the consultant hired by initiative backers, had not refused to accept petitions with 18,231 names collected independently by the Home Builders Association of Central Arizona.

The home builders cut a deal with the governor to redraft the initiative to remove a provision to impose fees on new homes. That left the sales tax increase.

In exchange, the organization agreed to provide $100,000 to help put the measure on the ballot.

But instead of offering up cash, Connie Wilhelm, the group's executive director, instead paid circulators of her own choosing. She submitted those petitions, along with a check for $27,129, to the consulting firm running the campaign.

Ziemba refused to accept the signatures, saying he had his own plan.

He insisted Monday that rejecting Wilhelm's petitions was not a mistake.

But Roc Arnett, president of the East Valley Partnership and one of the organizers of the road tax proposal, isn't so sure.

"In hindsight, maybe they should have" accepted them, he said.

Backers of the tax plan have so far raised close to $1 million, primarily from companies that could get a share of construction projects, with much of the money going to hire paid circulators.

There has been no organized opposition to this point, though a number of incumbent legislators and challengers have said they will not vote for the measure if it makes the ballot.