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Legislative Membership Initiative Enters Circulation

Equal Male/Female Membership of
Legislature. Initiative Constitutional Amendment.

SACRAMENTO - Secretary of State Debra Bowen today announced that the proponent of a new initiative may begin collecting petition signatures for her measure.

The Attorney General prepares the legal title and summary that is required to appear on initiative petitions. When the official language is complete, the Attorney General forwards it to the proponent and to the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State then provides calendar deadlines to the proponent and to county elections officials, and the initiative may be circulated for signatures. The Attorney General's official title and summary for the measure is as follows:

EQUAL MALE/FEMALE MEMBERSHIP OF LEGISLATURE. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. Requires that each Assembly district and each Senate district have two elected representatives, one male and one female, doubling the number of state legislators. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: Potential increase in county election costs in the range of millions of dollars every two years. (11-0069)

The Secretary of State's tracking number for this measure is 1536 and the Attorney General's tracking number is 11-0069.

The proponent for this measure, B.C. Keith, must collect signatures of 807,615 registered voters – the number equal to eight percent of the total votes cast for governor in the 2010 gubernatorial election – in order to qualify it for the ballot. The proponent has 150 days to circulate petitions for this measure, meaning the signatures must be collected by May 29, 2012.

The initiative proponent can be reached at 2320 Cortez, Sacramento, California 95825. No phone number was provided.

To sign up for regular ballot measure updates via email, RSS feed, or Twitter, go to www.sos.ca.gov/multimedia.

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