MIN CHC 1999-05-26 - Laserfiche WebLink

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• The procedures that Richard is talking about, and I don't off of the top of my head, know or remember why things were set up this way, but things like do you require 15 percent signatures, or if you want to make it tougher, you go to 30 percent signatures. The Charter has the -, that's not spelled out in State law at all; that's completely up to the Charter to tell you how the County wants to vote on its own initiatives and referenda. WURDEMAN: Yeah, I would agree with that. But what I was -, like in particular, 15 percent of the number of persons who voted in the County for the office of Mayor, that's the present requirement if you want to get something on the ballot. So what's voting for the office of Mayor, you know, is it putting -? It should be defined. I mean, you can define it anyway you want, but it's presently not defined. HERKES: Registered to voted or voted. WURDEMAN: Yeah. YUEN: Well, this all -, just to jump in here, this all got a little bit trickier about, I guess it was a year and a half ago with the State Supreme Court had the voting on the -, on whether we were going to have a ConCon. And at that -, I think before the voting was actually done, the State Attorney General's Office came out with an opinion and said blank ballots weren't counted in reaching 50 percent. Then it went to the State Supreme Court, and they said that you did count the blank ballots based on the language there which, I think said something 50 percent of votes cast was what was necessary. And they said, well, if you get in there, and you leave it blank, but you stick the ballot in the box, well, that's a vote cast. And the Charter, just to compare that, I think the Charter or saying 50 percent of a referendum, 50 percent -, I think it says 50 percent of the people voting on the measure, which is a -. WURDEMAN: Yeah. YUEN: Little different. And there's an older Hawaii case that says that's 50 percent of the people who actually, actually checked something off. WURDEMAN: Yeah -. YUEN: They don't count blanks. WURDEMAN: The older case went the opposite direction of the ConCon case, which makes one wonder if politics got involved, but I wouldn't want to say that. YUEN: But the wording is -, the wording of the two was a little bit different, that went to the -. So, you know, I think I knew what this meant, this 15 percent meant when we had it ten years ago, but in the light of what the Supreme Court said, you know, a year and a half ago, I might want to look at it again and see if it's become something that nobody knows the answer to 15