No Documents for “Undocumented” Immigrants
If you are a California resident who is as angry as I am over SB 60, be sure to sign up today to help collect signatures for the referendum. Referenda, like initiatives, require only 5% of the vote in the last gubernatorial election (see Cal. Const. Art. 2, Sec. 9(b)), less than half of what is required for recalls of statewide officials (12%, per Cal. Const. Art. 2, Sec. 14(b)). However, proponents of a referendum have only 90 days to collect the requisite number of signatures. As SB 60 was signed on Friday, September 5, that means that all signatures must be turned in no later than Thursday, December 4. This will probably put it on the March, 2004 ballot.
While it’s easy to say that the referendum against SB 60 will require 5% of the votes in the “last” gubernatorial election, it’s a bit more difficult to say what the “last” gubernatorial election is. One view is that it refers to the last gubernatorial election prior to the enactment of the statute subjected to the referendum, in which case we’d need slightly less than 5% of 8 million, or 400,000 (or 440,000 to reach the 110% threshold of Elections Code
