Election turnout raises bar for petition backers

Getting an initiative petition on the 2010 ballot in Nevada will be harder this year, since the huge election turnout in 2008 made it necessary to collect a lot more names.

The Secretary of State's office began accepting petition filings Sept. 1.

To qualify their cause for the ballot, advocates must get signatures equal to or greater than 10 percent of the turnout in the most recent general election - a number that changes every election cycle.

In the 2008 election, it took 58,628 or more valid signatures to get a petition on the ballot.

But with the turnout of nearly one million Nevada voters in November 2008, it will take 97,002 valid signatures of Nevada voters to get on the 2010 ballot.

That is an increase of 38,374 signatures - 60 percent.

The 2009 Legislature also changed the rules governing where those signatures must be collected.

Before, signatures equal to or more than 10 percent of the population had to be collected in each of the 17 counties to get a petition on the statewide ballot.

But the courts ruled that violated the constitutional mandate of one-man-one-vote. One tiny county could block the wishes of 95 percent of Nevada's registered voters.

The new rule requires a proportionate number of signatures be collected in each of Nevada's three congressional districts.

Initiative petitions, which typically call for voters to make constitutional changes, must be turned in to the secretary of state by Aug. 4, 2010, to get on the November ballot.