PRESS RELEASE – THE SECRETARY OF STATE FAILED TO COMPLY WITH WAC REQUIREMENT AND HAS NO VALID BASIS TO CERTIFY I-1000

“When we learned that the SoS (Secretary of State) did not resample when they removed additional petition sheets, we knew they did not follow proper procedure.” Said Mr. Kan Qiu, who, along with two other plaintiffs, filed a lawsuit challenging the SoS’s decision to certify I-1000 in February. “The SoS may sample as few as 3% of the signatures, and project the likely results from analysis of that subset, but only in accordance with WAC 434-379-010. And Dr. Huber’s report demonstrates that the SoS failed to comply with the WAC requirement. As a result, the SoS’s projection of the likely results is not statistically reliable.” Mr. Qiu continued.

The plaintiffs’ legal team hired Dr. William Huber, who earned a PhD in mathematics from Columbia University and holds a current PStat Certification (“Professional Statistician”) from the American Statistical Association, to comb through the SoS’s Public Records data. In his report, Dr. Huber states “the SoS did not carry out an ‘unrestricted random sample’ as required by the regulations (WAC 434-379-010)” and “the ‘protection against misrepresentation of the population’ [Snedecor and Cochran] afforded by an unrestricted random sample has not been achieved. Therefore, the SoS has not shown an objectively valid basis to certify the I-1000 petition.”

“The inconsistent handling of I-1000 petitions has given the SoS a difficult task with little margin for error. Unforeseen issues such as: two different versions of petition sheets in circulation; sticker-covered petition sheets; a signature gatherer who is under investigation by the Washington State Patrol for signature fraud; wet sheets that had to be dried out, etc. all contributed to shortcomings and errors in the SoS’s treatment of I-1000 signature petitions.” Mr. Qiu said. “We are asking the court to issue a citation requiring the SoS to submit the petitions to the court for examination.”

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