Article 5. Verification Of Nomination Signatures of California Elections Code >> Division 8. >> Part 1. >> Chapter 1. >> Article 5.

No fee or charge shall be made or collected by any officer for verifying any nomination document or circulator's affidavit.

Before any nomination document is filed in the office of the county elections official or forwarded for filing in the office of the Secretary of State, the county elections official shall verify the signatures and the political preferences, if required, of the signers on the nomination paper with the registration affidavits on file in the office of the county elections official. The county elections official shall mark "not sufficient" any signature that does not appear in the same handwriting as appears on the affidavit of registration in his or her office, or that is accompanied by a declaration of party preference that is not in accordance with the declaration of party preference in the affidavit of registration. The county elections official may cease to verify signatures once the minimum requisite number of signatures has been verified.

All nomination documents that are required to be filed in the office of the Secretary of State, within five days after being left with the county elections official in compliance with Section 8020, shall be forwarded by the county elections official to the Secretary of State, who shall receive and file them. The county elections official shall forward with the nomination documents a statement showing the total number of signatures on the nomination document that have not been marked "not sufficient."

The county elections official's statement to the Secretary of State of the number of signers shall be in substantially the following form:

STATEMENT OF COUNTY ELECTIONS OFFICIAL OF NUMBER OF SIGNERS

I, County Elections Official of the County of ____, hereby certify that I have examined the ____ hereto attached filed on behalf of ____, candidate for nomination to the office of ____ at the primary election to be held on the __ day of ____, 19_, and that the total number of signatures which I have not marked "not sufficient" is ____. Dated this __ day of ____, 19_. __County Elections Official
  (SEAL) By _________ Deputy

If the number of signatures affixed to an in-lieu filing fee petition filed pursuant to Section 8106 is 100 or more, the county elections official may use a random sampling technique for verification of the signatures. If a random sampling technique is used, and the number of signatures on a petition is 100 or more but less than 2,000, the random sampling shall include an examination of 100 signatures. If the number of signatures on a petition is 2,000 or more, the random sampling shall include an examination of 5 percent of the signatures. Upon completion of the verification of signatures in the sample, the percentage of signatures which are valid shall be applied and projected to the total number of signatures submitted.