Denver sheriff’s deputies still are trying to find out how more than half of the nearly 60,000 signatures supporting a push for giving them enhanced arrest powers ended up invalid, said a lawyer hired by the deputies.
Clerk and Recorder Stephanie O’Malley reported Tuesday that 22,058 of the signatures on petitions submitted by the deputies were valid, far short of the 41,666 required to get the matter on the ballot.
David Osborne, the lawyer hired by the union that represents the deputies, said he still is trying to determine what went awry.
The deputies have until Nov. 12 to file a new petition to cure the deficiency. The union can challenge in district court.
Osborne said the deputies hired FieldWorks Inc., a Washington, D.C., petition-gathering firm, to collect the signatures. As of midday Wednesday, he still had not been able to talk to that firm’s officials to determine how to proceed.
“The information we got from the city and county of Denver is different than what we were getting from FieldWorks as it gathered signatures,” Osborne said.
Steve Rabinowitz, a spokesman for FieldWorks, said the firm believes the “validity rate is much higher.”
He added: “When the signatures are fully vetted, I think the numbers will be different and much closer to what FieldWorks represented to its clients.”
Osborne said elections officials found most of the signatures invalid because many of those who signed weren’t registered to vote in Denver, which is a requirement in the ballot initiative process.
He said the union officials talked with FieldWorks on a weekly basis during the 90 days the firm gathered the signatures. He said FieldWorks had software of Denver’s voter-registration records and that the firm said it regularly used the software to verify signatures.
Osborne said the firm reported to the union that more than 65 percent of the signatures were valid, and some weeks as high as 73 percent.
“The FieldWorks folks used similar software as the city and county of Denver,” Osborne said. “We’re curious in where the discrepancy lies.”
Elections director Michael Scarpello said the city hired 30 temporary workers to check each signature against voter-registration records.
