Appeals Court Hears Referendum Arguments

[Hazumu]

The hearing was actually quite short, about an hour and a half between the first statements and the last. First, the seven-judge panel listened to Jonathan Shurberg argue for the petitioners, explaining why the court should stop the referendum. He presented three points:

    * When inactive voters are added to active ones to derive the total number of registered voters, the referendum petitions do not have five percent of registered voters as required by law
    * A ten-day deadline is set by law for filing a complaint, but it is not clear whether that part of the law is applicable to this situation at all
    * There are problems interpreting the law that establishes the date that a determination has been made by the Board of Elections, which defines, in this case, when important deadlines occur