The original deadline for the petition drive to put the recall of Michigan governor Rick Snyder expired. However, recall organizers have elected to continue their effort. From my latest piece at A2Politico:
Perhaps the biggest challenge for the recall organizers has been the extremely short period of time Michigan laws allow for the collection of petition signatures. The petition language is approved for 180 days. However, the signatures must be gathered within a 90-day window. To get the recall question on a statewide ballot, recall organizers need to collect just over 800,000 valid signatures. With a target of a million or more and only 90 days in which to gather them, the challenge is formidable, to be sure.The original deadline for gathering signatures passed last week and organizers were considerably short of their goal. However, they are not stopping their effort. Although they won’t be able to get the recall on the November 2011 ballot, they are still planning to move forward.
The Committee to recall Rick Snyder (CRRS) has decided to extend this petition drive. Here’s how it all works.The petition as it passed clarity is valid for 180 days. The signatures that we submit to the SOS have to have been collected in a 90-day window period. That 90-day window can thus move forward, allowing us to extend our signature gathering period.
The only caveat to doing this is that with every day that we extend the drive, a day of signature gathering is lost. For example, we will drop off the period May 21st to July 1st when signature gathering was slow. That will as of today, extend our petition drive to roughly September 29th.
The diagram below is based on our best projection as we still do not have final figures to say with certainty what we will need during this timeframe. It’s close and if anything we err on the safe/conservative side.
As you can see, given the current momentum, it is totally within the mathematical realm of possibility that we will be able to collect the less than 800,000 signatures in the remaining 60 days. We will lose less than 10,000 signatures if we drop the period May 21st through June 30th. We will keep the more than 300,000 we collected during the month on July. In effect that gives us a starting month count of over 300,000 signatures. One can hardly wish for a better start.
NOTE: If you signed a petition to recall Governor Snyder in MAY or JUNE, you need to sign a new petition. And if you haven’t signed one yet, you need to correct that IMMEDIATELY!!!
Read more about the effort, including how they have joined forces with the Michigan Forward effort to repeal the Emergency Manager Law at A2Politico.
