The Pierce County Auditor’s Office has completed checking the signatures of Referendum 2015-1 regarding the proposed General Services Building. The referendum needed 24,427 valid signatures to qualify and achieved 24,493 valid signatures at approximately 10:15 a.m. today.

“I am proud of our elections team. They diligently checked thousands of signatures with accuracy and integrity during an intensely busy time,” said Pierce County Auditor Julie Anderson. “Our primary election is rapidly approaching and simultaneously there have been multiple citizen petitions with tight timelines.”

The petition signatures were checked using Pierce County’s voter registration system. To be considered valid:

• Each petition signer must be a registered voter in Pierce County.
• The signature on the petition must match the voter registration signature on file.

Pierce County Elections checked 33,519 signatures for this referendum before reaching the validation threshold. Once the validation requirement was reached, election workers stopped work. There are 372 additional pages which have not been checked.

“We are thorough and conservative. There was no reason to continue the signature check process once the validation number was reached. Now, we can turn our attention to another pressing issue: Signature checking for the City of Tacoma’s Charter Change Amendment petition.”

Referendum 2015-1 will appear on the November 3, 2015 General Election ballot.