Initiative Author Challenges Petition Procedure

The author of a proposed ballot initiative that seeks to protect the rights of medical malpractice victims has sued the California secretary of state, claiming the state’s requirement that only registered voters can sign petitions caused the initiative to be disqualified for the November ballot.

The suit, filed Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court, also blamed a delay by the state attorney general’s office in preparing a title and summary for the initiative for pushing the initiative schedule too far back to make the ballot.

Measure’s Objective

The initiative, authored by Los Angeles physician and attorney Russell Kussman, seeks to remove the present $250,000 cap on the amount of damages medical malpractice victims can be awarded for pain and suffering, leaving that determination instead to judges and juries.

Kussman said he turned in more than 1 million signatures for the proposed initiative, well above the 630,136 required for a constitutional amendment. But Secretary of State March Fong Eu said a random sample of the petitions failed to indicate that enough qualified voters had signed it to schedule the measure for November’s ballot.

A full analysis of all the signatures is now under way, but the count will not be completed in time to schedule the measure before the June, 1988, election.

Kussman claims that many of the signatures thrown out in the random sample were rejected because they were not those of registered voters. Yet the state Constitution says only that “electors” must sign such petitions, and the Elections Code defines an elector as a citizen who has resided within a voting precinct for at least 29 days, Kussman asserts.

Basis of Argument

By rejecting all signatures that did not match up with the voting rolls, the state may have been rejecting people who were registered when they signed the petition, but moved, or who might otherwise be qualified to sign as “electors,” Kussman argues.

A spokeswoman for the secretary of state, Melissa Warren, said the random sampling of signatures “came in at such a low rate that the chances were good it would not qualify at all.”

While the random analysis of the proposed initiative would have needed to project at least 110% of the 630,136 qualified signatures needed to make the November ballot without a full analysis of all petitions, the sample showed only 91.9% qualified, Warren said.

Constitution Cited

Warren said the secretary of state has always required petition signatures from registered voters, since the Constitution specifically states that such signatures must come from a percentage of the electors who voted in the most recent gubernatorial election.

“I don’t know that there is a difference between an elector and a registered voter,” she added. “You can’t vote for anybody unless you are registered to vote, and you can’t be an elector of anybody unless you vote for somebody.”

Judge Robert I. Weil set a July 10 hearing on the matter.