Election officials say Sawant supporters can continue collecting recall signatures
Jul 15, 2021, 1:21 PM | Updated: 2:23 pm
A "Sawant Solidarity" petitioner in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. (MyNorthwest photo)
(MyNorthwest photo)
Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant and her supporters can continue collecting signatures for her recall, following a complaint filed by the campaign stating that she was “co-opting the process.”
Sawant now urging supporters to collect signature to force recall vote
The recall campaign recently reported that it had collected over 9,000 signatures of the 10,739 it needs to trigger a vote in the next regularly scheduled election. While it technically has until mid-October before a mandated 180-day window expires, it has indicated that it hopes to meet the Aug. 1 deadline needed to have the recall take place in November.
That saw Sawant begin a push to help collect signatures last week, accusing the recall campaign of actually targeting a lower turnout special election in 2022. In having her supporters join the signature-gathering effort, her belief is that the higher turnout general election in November will attract more progressive voters.
In response to that, the recall campaign’s lawyers submitted a complaint with King County Elections over the weekend, citing concerns that Sawant and her supporters were “confusing the voters and may be planning to not turn [the signatures they gather] over to the recall committee.”
The complaint called on King County Elections and/or the King County Prosecutor’s Office to inform Sawant that signatures “must be formally validated and submitted” by the recall campaign.
Kshama Sawant recall group targets November election
King County Elections issued a response Thursday, confirming that the state’s laws “only allow for the person, committee, or organization demanding the recall to submit the signature pages to our office.”
“We cannot accept petition pages from anyone else,” a spokesperson told MyNorthwest.
That said, it also noted that it’s still legal for Sawant’s supporters to continue collecting the actual signatures themselves, although they can only be counted if they’re first given over to the recall campaign for verification and final submission.
