VOTE PETITION CHECKED OUT UNDER GUARD.

Byline: Michael Coit Daily News Staff Writer

An armed guard greets happy couples seeking marriage licenses, real estate professionals reviewing records, small-business owners filing fictitious names inside a stark office building off Imperial Highway.

Posted at a circular console, the Los Angeles County police officer peers over video monitors connected to outside cameras and glances at panic alarms linked to dozens of cashiers. The guard's gaze is also fixed on streams of people moving through the double glass lobby doors.

Security is critical because the seven-story former home to one of the world's largest engineering firms is headquarters for the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/Clerk and all its combined financial and record-keeping tasks.

One of the locked areas beyond the guard post is an expansive office where voter services clerks are checking reams of petitions calling for the unprecedented San Fernando Valley cityhood study.

Yet it's just another day at the office for Voter Services Division Manager Sally McKenna and her crew.

``We don't think about the security,'' she said.

Further, McKenna said there is no added pressure despite the notable interest in this particular petition. ``These people do this every day. They're not thinking they're working on a Valley VOTE petition.''

Extra attention

The stakes, though, are high.

A few thousand signatures might make the difference in whether enough Valley voters have signed on to trigger a process ultimately leading to a public vote on secession.

If they fall short, leaders of Valley Voters Organized Toward Empowerment and their petition consultant can come in and hunt for qualified signatures that might have been missed.

``We don't have the luxury to do that,'' said Registrar-Recorder Conny McCormack, noting that each clerk has two to three minutes to review each signature.

``There are all sorts of things that can happen with a signature verification. It's not an easy task,'' McCormack recently told the agency overseeing the cityhood process. ``We don't pretend to be perfect. We've never said that.''

McCormack, though, contends her staff comes pretty close to perfection. That is why she held firm when Valley VOTE leaders recently questioned both the fairness and the forecasting of a random count.

Confidence in count

The monthlong check of more than 6,000 signatures among the 202,514 turned in was inconclusive in predicting whether Valley VOTE had the 131,771 qualified signatures needed to trigger the cityhood study. When factoring the significant penalties for 24 duplicate signatures, the state election code formula figured Valley VOTE would fall more than 3,000 signatures short, McCormack explained.

Valley VOTE ultimately dropped its opposition when the Local Agency Formation Commission recently reviewed the random count results. The group instead urged the full count be completed as soon as possible.

But the group remains confident it obtained plenty of qualifying signatures to surpass the required number and mandate the unprecedented cityhood study.

``We have internally examined this petition. We've entered 100 percent of the names into a computer to verify,'' said Jeff Brain, president of Valley VOTE.

``We believe we have enough signatures to qualify irrespective of the random sample.''

Valley VOTE leaders, however, have not questioned either the petition verification process or security and handling.

Voter services clerks gain entry to their workroom after the guard unlocks the double doors each morning. Their supervisor locks the doors when the clerks leave for home each evening.

During their eight-hour workday, the 45-50 clerks working the cityhood petition each check some 200 signatures on average to verify whether they belong to Valley residents registered when the six-month petition effort was undertaken. At that pace, the work should be done at least by early March, McCormack said.

Verifying signatures is done on an 8-year-old computer program the county is literally using for the last time on the Valley VOTE petitions before switching to a faster program, McKenna said.

McKenna said she could not estimate how much time the new program would save on the Valley VOTE petition, and it won't be available anyway for another month.

``It would have been scary to try this petition of this magnitude on a new system,'' she said.

Deciding the fate of the Valley VOTE signatures are clerks with as much as a decade or less than a year of experience in signature verification.

Their task features both a keen eye and a brisk pace.

``You look for the same slants. Typically the capital letters don't change as much as the rest. We look for a big loopy signature vs. a scrunched one,'' McKenna explained.

Clerks go through the following scenario:

For each petition signature, a worker enters the last name, first name, address and city to determine whether the voter was registered within the San Fernando Valley boundaries during the petition drive period.

If the signature is on file, it appears in a corner of the computer screen. The clerk will attempt to match the signatures. If they match, the clerk will qualify the signature. If they don't, a supervisor makes the decision or asks Dorothy Scates, data entry and signature verification director, to make the call.

If the signature is not on file, the clerk will indicate that next to the voter's name. All signatures not found will be checked after the entire petition is completed. If the name is misspelled or a nickname is used, the clerk will correct the file. If no voter information is found, that remains the status of the petition signature.

``That's why we do that second pass. That helps with the accuracy,'' Scates noted.

McCormack said she assigns as many of the 60 full-time clerks as possible to the petition. The others work on tasks such as updating voter information from the November election and reviewing nominating petitions for municipal elections across the county this spring.

``We are rotating different amounts of staff on it. We have competing priorities. So we're working out all the different ways we can work,'' she said.

Results under wraps

The clerks will stop after they reach 131,771 qualified signatures. Then duplicates will be checked, but there is no extra penalty as in the random count, the election officials said.

The petitions remain secured in the room until the entire review is completed. Then LAFCO will be responsible for them.

McCormack will issue a final report to LAFCO. If Valley VOTE falls short, LAFCO must officially notify the group and state law provides a 15-day period for Valley VOTE to collect additional signatures to get over the top, said Bill Pellman, county counsel for LAFCO.

Petitioners by law can't look at signatures until they are declared invalid at the end of the entire review. Then the petitioners and the firm that completed the signature gathering can look for good signatures the clerks might have missed.

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Photo

PHOTO Claudio Manzo, a county data entry clerk, verifies signatures on the Valley cityhood study petition.

Michael Owen Baker/Daily News