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Presidential Elector Initiative Enters Circulation

Electoral Votes. Presidential and Vice-Presidential Candidates Initiative Statute.

SACRAMENTO - Secretary of State Debra Bowen today announced the proponent of a new initiative may begin collecting petition signatures for his 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, and the initiative may be circulated for signatures. The Secretary of State then provides calendar deadlines to the proponent and to county elections officials. The Attorney General's official title and summary for the measure is as follows:

ELECTORAL VOTES. PRESIDENTIAL AND VICE-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES. INITIATIVE STATUTE. Changes existing law which awards all of the State's electoral votes to the presidential and vice-presidential winners of the popular vote within California, and instead divides and assigns electoral votes to the candidates according to their share of the popular vote. Requires each presidential elector to live in California. Requires Secretary of State to determine the percentage of the popular vote received by each candidate and certify to each candidate and political party the number of electoral votes won by each candidate. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: No direct fiscal effect on state or local governments. (13-0045.)

The Secretary of State's tracking number for this measure is 1633 and the Attorney General's tracking number is 13-0049.

The proponent for the measure, Hal Nickle, must collect signatures of 504,760 registered voters – the number equal to five 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 the measure, meaning the signatures must be collected by June 20, 2014.

The proponent can be reached at makeourvotecount@gmail.com. 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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