Affirmative action petition is pulled

NewsOK.com
April 5, 2008
By John Greiner
Capitol Bureau

A motion to withdraw an initiative petition prohibiting government-sponsored race and gender preferences was filed with the state Supreme Court on Friday by the group promoting the petition. aturday, April 5, 2008
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The Oklahoma Civil Rights Initiative's motion said it didn't believe it could withstand a challenge to the number of signatures it collected for a statewide vote on the proposal, State Question 737.
The American Civil Liberties Union had filed the signature challenge on behalf of protesters including Reps. Mike Shelton, D-Oklahoma City, and Jabar Shumate, D-Tulsa.
A hearing on the challenge was set for Tuesday before a Supreme Court referee.
The circulators of the petition had collected 141,184 signatures.
They needed a minimum of 138,970 valid signatures of registered voters and would have to withstand any legal challenges to get on an election ballot.
Taxpayers' money consideredIn February, Secretary of State Susan Savage told the Supreme Court the petition had large numbers of duplicate names and addresses.
But on Feb. 25, the court said the signatures were numerically sufficient and then established a period for people to file a protest.
The motion to withdraw the petition said the validity rate for the signatures it collected would need to be in excess of 90 percent, "which is a statistical impossibility given historical validity rates . ...”
It also said the group didn't want to waste the court's efforts or taxpayers' money when it was reasonably certain it would fail to have enough valid signatures. [To read the entire article, go to: http://newsok.com/article/3225847/1207371424]