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A petition to legalize liquor sales in Simpson County failed to gather enough signatures to be presented to the county’s Board of Supervisors. Mayor Dale Berry led the push to have legalized liquor sales added to the November 2018 general election ballot failed Friday morning, September 7, when the Circuit Clerk’s office reported that only 780 of the 1809 submitted signatures were certified.
To be successful, the petition needed a minimum of 1501 certified signatures.
Circuit Clerk Steve Womack, in an interview with MageeNews.com (which you can watch below), stated that usually 25% of submitted signatures cannot be verified, which means that of the 1809 signatures submitted, only 1357 would normally be certified. For this reason, Womack said the petition would fail to pass even if his office had been able to finish certifying the signatures before the board’s meeting on Friday morning.
The deadline to add legalizing liquor sales in Simpson County to the November ballot is Friday, September 7, 2018 at 5:00 p.m. According to the Secretary of State’s office, any signatures verified on the petition can be banked until next year when the petition can be presented again.
The reason Berry and others were attempting to have the vote added to the November general election ballot was to avoid the cost of a special election, but signatures will continue to be gathered in hopes the proposal will pass in coming months.
Berry has provided copies of documents that show when the signatures were submitted to the Circuit Clerk’s office, and he stressed that the signatures were not all submitted at once right before the deadline.
Womack told the Board of Supervisors that it takes an average of 7-8 minutes to verify a signature. Berry questioned that amount of time and shared a link to the Secretary of State’s website that is used in verifying signatures, though the speed at which the site checks voter rolls does not account for the amount of time necessary to read hand-written signatures and address information.
Petitions are still available at City Hall and area businesses if the public would like to sign them.
From the Secretary of State’s Office, Regarding Liquor Sales:
Dates Signatures Were Submitted to the Circuit Clerk’s Office:
