Price recall opponents receive a dose of hopium

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Proponents seeking to recall Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price at a rally on March 4 prior to submitting more than 123,000 signatures. But now the fate of the recall is in question.

COUNTY NEWS

PRICE RECALL

—TENTATIVE DECISION—The Alameda County Registrar of Voters needs more time to verify if Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price will face a recall.

—Alameda County Registrar of Voters Tim Dupuis said on Thursday that a random sampling of 123,374 signatures submitted last week by Save Alameda For Everyone (SAFE), the group seeking to recall Price, was “not sufficient to determine whether the signature threshold to call for a recall election has been met.”

—“As required by state law, the ROV will now begin a manual count of the verified signatures submitted,” Dupuis said on Thursday afternoon.

—The minimum number of valid signatures required to qualify the recall for the special election is 73,195.

—The county charter allows 10 days for the verification of petitions. Thursday was the deadline for the registrar to complete process.

—Under state election law, the registrar’s office has 30 days to complete the manual verification of signatures.

—The campaign opposing the recall was jubilant about the news.

—“After all that noise, they’ve failed their first test. We’ll wait to crack up the Guinness until the votes are manually counted but things are looking good,” said William Fitzgerald, campaign spokesperson for Protect the Win, the campaign opposing the Price recall.

—“Their whole campaign is nothing but a hack job trying to oust a democratically elected DA,” he added.

—The announcement, however, does not mean the recall campaign failed to exceed the minimum number required for certification.

—Under state law, a random sampling of signatures require is approved after reaching 110 percent of the required number of signatures. In this case, the random sampling did not exceed roughly 80,500 valid signatures.

—“Based on the number of signatures, we have a significant cushion here,” said Eduardo Escobar, a member of SAFE. “We’re not concerned. We will triumph.”

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