SMART repeal effort officially fails to qualify for ballot

<p>The effort to force an election to repeal the sales tax that funds the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit District failed to meet the minimum number of signatures necessary, according to a count by the Sonoma and Marin elections departments on Monday.</p><p>RepealSMART organizers obtained 5,471 signatures in Sonoma and 9,111 signatures in Marin, for a total of 14,582.</p><p>The minimum threshold was 14,902, said Gloria Colter, Sonoma County's assistant registrar of voters.</p><p>Because the total fell short, Sonoma and Marin elections officials will not go through the process of verifying the signatures, Colter said.</p><p>SMART's opponents on Monday said that they will now consider refiling their petition and trying again to qualify an initiative, but might not make a decision until later this week.</p><p>“What we are doing is kind of consulting with our core volunteers,” said Clay Mitchell of Windsor, RepealSMART co-chairman. “Being an all-volunteer effort, it is requisite to see where people's energy is for further action.”</p><p>RepealSMART organizers turned in signatures on Friday, acknowledging they probably had failed, but until a count on Monday didn't know how short they would be.</p><p>During a verification process, 25 to 35 percent of the signatures are usually disqualified, indicating they would have needed to collect 19,000 to 20,000 to have a chance to force an election, organizers had said.</p><p>RepealSMART was attempting to qualify a measure for the November ballot to repeal Measure Q, the quarter-percent sales tax passed by voters in November 2008 that is SMART's major source of funding.</p><p>The opponents of SMART complained that SMART's initial proposal was scaled back so much that it wouldn't accomplish what was intended in reducing traffic and emissions.</p>