Last Update: January 20, 2016

How to

Verify Petition Signatures

About Petition Signature Verification

How to Undo Verification of a Voter's Petition

This topic explains how to accept or reject a voter's petition.

Sticky Dates

To verify petition signatures:

  1. On the PETITIONS tab, verify that the current petition (and batch) in focus is the one you want to work on. If not, change the focus to the correct petition (and batch).

  2. Click Verify Signatures.

  3. On the Find a Voter dialog, find the voter who signed the first petition in your stack of paper petition forms.

If you are unable to locate the voter, click Unknown Voter. When recording an unknown voter. it's important to type the entire voter name from the petition into the name fields, since this information will appear in petition reports.

  1. On the Petition Verification dialog, verify that you have the right voter by comparing the voter's name, address, and date of birth onscreen with what was entered on the petition.

If you have the wrong voter, click Close and repeat step 3.

If the voter's address is different from what is on record, see How to Process an Address Change on a Petition.

If the voter is not eligible to sign the petition—for instance, because they don't reside in the district in which the candidate is running or are ineligible to sign for some other reason—the Save Signature button will be disabled and a rejection reason will appear in the Reject Reason field. Click Close and proceed to the next petition for verification.

  1. In the Signed field, enter the date the petition was signed by the voter. Compare it to the date displayed in Open Date (and Candidate File Date if a candidate petition). The signing date cannot be prior to these dates; otherwise you will get a rejection message when you try to accept the signature. Also, the signing date must be on or after the voter's Registration Date.

If you want the same Signed date to be present for the next voter, select the Remember check box next to the Signed field.

  1. In the Received field, enter the date the petition was received in your office. If you want this date to be present for the next voter, select the Remember check box next to the Received field.

  2. Compare the voter's signature onscreen with the signature on the petition.

If multiple signatures are on file, you can scroll through them by clicking the blue arrows and beneath the signature clip.

If the signature image is unreadable or not positioned correctly in the signature window, click View Image. Then, holding down your mouse button, drag the mouse to draw a box around the signature. Release the mouse button and click Save Sig Posn to update the signature clip.

To accept the petition:

  1. Select Accepted from the Reject Reason drop-down list.

  2. Click Save Signature. The accepted-petition details are displayed in the Last Action on this Petition for this voter field.

To reject the petition:

  1. Select a reason for the rejection from the Reject Reason drop-down list.

  2. Click Save Signature. The rejected-petition details are displayed with the voter's name. Click OK.

The message Petition required Target of <number> has been met appears when you click Save Signature when the number in Number-of-Signatures-Req on the Petition Maintenance dialog has been verified. You can still continue to verify signatures after this point, but you will continue to see this message. Click OK to dismiss the message and continue verifying signatures.