Monday, May 14 — A petition circulated to recall Lassen County District 5 Supervisor Jack Hanson has failed.

In a written statement issued today Monday, May 14,Lassen County Clerk Julie Bustamante said she received the petition in her office the afternoon of Thursday, May 10.

“At first glance it looked as though a sufficient number of signatures were received to move forward with a special recall election. The prima facie count looked to be 754 signatures, and only 568 qualified signatures were needed,” Bustamante wrote.

However, upon examination, Bustamante said she discovered three pages were circulated before the date the petition was “approved to form” by her on March 9.

Bustamante said the declaration of the person circulating these sections indicated the signatures were collected between March 3 and 5. It was also noted those sections of the petition were actually copies of the petition she rejected on March 5 instead of the final petition approved March 9.

She cited Elections Code 11042 (d), which says, “No signatures may be affixed to a recall petition until the elections official has notified the proponents that the form and wording of the proposed petition meets the requirements.”

In addition, Bustamante said, “Upon closer examination I discovered an additional 70 sections of this petition were also copied from the March 5, 2012, rejected petition. In accordance with statewide procedures, these sections cannot be accepted for filing and the signatures attached cannot be included in the raw count.

Only 22 sections of this petition were copied from the March 9 approved petition.After examining these sections and conducting a raw count, I have determined that they contain a total of 143 signatures, prima facie, which does not meet the minimum number of 568, which is required to file this petition. Therefore I am declaring the remaining portion of the petition insufficient.”