Secretary of State Sam Reed announced recently that Initiative I-872, the measure to institute a “Top Two” general election ballot selection, has sufficient valid signatures to qualify for a spot on the statewide ballot in Nov.

According to election workers, a check of petition signatures submitted in support of the proposal has shown that the measure meets constitutional requirements for a minimum of 197,734 valid voter signatures. The measure will appear on the General Election Ballot.

The official ballot summary on Initiative I-872 reads, “This measure proposes a new system for conducting primaries for partisan offices. This proposal continues current practice of permitting voters to vote for any candidate for any office in primary and general elections, without limitation based on party. The two “top” candidates with the most votes in the primary advance to the general election. Candidates continue to designate their party. It becomes effective only if the court decision invalidating the traditional blanket primary becomes final.”

Sponsors of I-872 submitted a total of 308,402 petition signatures to the Secretary of State. Election workers determined that the petition contained 258,513 valid signatures — 60,779 more than the required minimum. Signatures are invalid if the signer is not a registered voter or if he or she signed more than once.

The petition was checked using the “random sample” process authorized by state law. Under the process, a statistically valid percentage of the signatures are selected at random and checked against voter registration records. A mathematical formula is then applied to the results to obtain a projected rate of invalidation.

Election officials examined 7,678 signatures (a 2.5 percent sample) on I-872. From that inspection, it was determined that the measure had an invalidation rate 16.18 percent.