Naked City

No chad-counting, but plenty of petition-checking kicks off this year's official race for Austin City Council. Just ask City Clerk Shirley Brown, whose office is currently verifying signatures turned in by the three incumbents hoping to bypass term limits laws by collecting 18,263 signatures apiece. Brown's office has already determined that Council Members Beverly Griffith and Daryl Slusher submitted enough valid sigs to make their ballot slots safe. Office staff reviewed a random sample of 6,501 signatures for Griffith (25% of the total); 5,210 were determined to be eligible voters, so the city believes that between 20,310 and 21,269 of the total are valid. Meanwhile, Slusher got an estimated 19,705 valid signatures. At press time, the city is still examining petitions turned in by Jackie Goodman.

Meanwhile, activist Linda Curtis -- who is challenging Goodman's Place 3 seat and worked to gather signatures for Griffith -- said she intends to do her own check of Goodman's petition. Curtis told online city politics newsletter In Fact Daily (www.infactdaily.com), "We never got 75%" validity rates in previous ballot initiatives on which she worked. If only 75% of Goodman's 24,080 signatures are valid, that would put her at 18,060 -- 203 short. (For comparison, the clerk's check of Griffith's petitions turned up 80% valid signatures.)

Brown originally hadn't planned on verifying the signatures because state law doesn't require it; all she really needed was affidavits from the council members promising that the signatures are valid. However, demands from several council critics -- and eventually, in a wise PR move, from the candidates themselves -- prompted her and her staff to work overtime to check the petitions.