OLYMPIA — At least 1,000 signatures submitted in an attempt to qualify a referendum on same-sex marriage are fraudulent, a secretary of state’s spokesman said Monday.
“The approximately 1,000 signatures were names of legitimate registered voters, but the signatures did not match the ones on file,” said David Ammons, communications director for Secretary of State Sam Reed, who is the state’s top elections officer.
The non-matching signatures are a drop in the bucket of the nearly 250,000 signatures, purportedly of registered voters across Washington state, submitted to Reed’s office in Olympia last week that blocked a same-sex bill passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Chris Gregoire from becoming law.
As long as 120,577 valid voter signatures are provided, the law will remain on hold until voters decide Referendum 74 in the Nov. 6 election. A “yes” vote on the ballot would be to approve same-sex marriage.
The questioned 1,000 signatures were culled from a sampling of 7,420, representing 3 percent of the total of 247,331 submitted, Ammons said.
The petition sheets bearing the bogus signatures were circulated by the same individual, apparently a paid signature solicitor, he said.
Sponsors estimated that about 25,000 of their signatures came from paid solicitors.
Many of the other signatures came via petition-signing campaigns by opponents of same-sex marriage — including a Sequim church that held a drive-up signature day after taking out a full-page advertisement in the Peninsula Daily News critical of same-sex marriage.
Ammons said that after the signature verification check is completed this week, Reed’s elections division will conduct a full review of the questionable signatures and turn the results over to the State Patrol for further investigation.
“We take initiative fraud very seriously,” Reed said.
“The initiative and referendum is a constitutional right granted the voters of Washington, and we are rigorous in protecting it.”
Initiative and referendum petition fraud is a Class C felony punishable by a maximum five years in prison and/or a maximum $10,000 fine, according to Reed.