California: Alameda County Reports District Attorney Signatures need to go to full handcount

Alameda County Registrar of Voters has announced that a random sampling method of checking the signatures in the Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price recall effort has not led to a conclusive answer on whether they have enough signatures to make the ballot. The Registrar will now be counting by hand (Props to the Registrar's office for handling it during an election!). However, this leads to some questions. 

Petitioners handed in 123,374 signatures and they need 73,195 valids. Alameda Charter required that the signatures be fully counted in 10 days. The state law for localities (though not for state-level officials) allows for the sample method -- however, Alameda does not seem to have any such provision. Alameda's Measure B, adopting this law (full discussion of what the law does here), seems to be passing, but it is not official and therefore would not appear to be operative. It's not clear to me why they were allowed to do the sampling method, but it's possible that no one will challenge, so that is that. 

The random sampling method that the state uses -- and presumably Alameda uses, though it is not spelled out in the press release -- takes place when there are more than 500 signatures submitted for the recall. Clerks take a 5% sampling of the signatures and determine the number of valid signatures handed in. They then extrapolate -- they multiply the verification rate by the number of total signatures. If the number that comes out leads to valid signatures that would top 110 percent of the minimum number (I believe that would be 80,515 -- 110% X 73,195), the recall automatically qualifies and moves to the ballot. If it is below 90 percent (I believe 65,876), it automatically fails.

If it falls in the golden zone between 90-110 percent, they then hand-verify each signature. Note that the Sonoma County D.A. recall came in at 108%, requiring the manual recount and the LA District Attorney recall came in at 99%. The Sonoma one made the ballot (though the DA easily survived the vote), the LA one ultimately failed. 

Unfortunately, the memo doesn't provide any guidance on how many signatures were checked or what was the verification rate in their sampling method. The LA County Registrar provided this detail -- perhaps it will show up. It also doesn't explain if they tossed out signatures from out-of-county gatherers, which may explain the high failure rate. If so, that very well may be overturned by the courts, due to the Supreme Court decision, Buckley v. ACLF. Note that recalls are considered a ballot measure by California rules (though not by any case that I know of -- the question is an important for campaign finance issues). 

It sounds like they will take 30 days to count from here, though again, the charter seems to be very different. Note that according to the existing charter, the petitioners may have a 10 day cure period (the language is unclear) if the signatures don't meet the requirements. 

If the pre-existing law is used, it does not appear to allow for a signature strike, whereby signers can withdraw their signature from the petitions (that law was adopted in 2017). Couldn't tell you how it'll play out though.