47,096 Perot Signatures Validated

A top election official said Wednesday that Ventura County supporters of Ross Perot for President have submitted 47,096 valid signatures, more than a third of the total signatures needed statewide to qualify Perot for the November ballot.

Bruce Bradley, the county’s assistant registrar of voters, said a computer-generated 3% random sample showed that 86.4% of the 54,509 names of registered voters turned in to his office were valid, a higher percentage than most petitions.

“It was a very clean petition,” Bradley said. On most petitions, he said, only about 80% of the signatures check out as those of registered voters.

Jim Ritchey of Ventura, county co-chairman of Perot’s petition committee, said Perot supporters have even more signatures from those voters who want to see Perot on the California ballot.

“We have a couple of thousand signatures at the (Perot campaign) office we haven’t turned in,” Ritchey said. “We’re getting 10 to 30 people a day coming to sign. That tells me that people are still out there wanting to get on the Perot bandwagon.”

Perot has yet to announce that he is a presidential candidate. He needs the signatures of 1% of the California voters who cast ballots in the November, 1990, general election. That represents 134,781 names that must be verified by officials in the state’s 58 counties.

If Ventura County’s high verification rate is any guide, it appears certain that Perot’s name will be on the ballot. About 1.4 million signatures were turned in statewide by Perot supporters.

“Based on our percentage, they will have more than 1 million good signatures,” Bradley said.