California

Voter Registrations

California is one of the few states to have these types of forms. See Voter Registrations for how to process them.

When prompted, select the county written to right of address. Ignore any county preprinted at top of form.

Do not abbreviate the city when entering registrations.

Circulator Declarations

The shorthand is the

first letter of first name
first letter of last name
first digit of house number
first letter or digit of street name
first letter of city
full 5-digit zip code

All California declarations have between (from and to) dates and an Executed on date. Some local petitions have a fourth date next to the circulator signature. The date defaults to current year, so you need only enter year if the circulator wrote a different year than current.

If any declaration date has a write-over and is not rewritten nearby, leave that date field blank. If any declaration date is fixed by the circulator but lacks the circulator's initials for the change, leave that field blank as well.

Signatures

Initiative ID

For each form, you might prompted to enter the initiative ID. Ignore most of the formal initiative ID that includes the year proposed and revision number, and only enter the unique number as shown in the image below. For example, for initiative 23-0021A1, enter 21. For 23-0024A1, enter 24. You will likely need to resize the Scan window to see the top of the form where the initiative ID is printed.

OTG Withdrawal Forms

The signing date is not required on the withdrawal form.

GOCO Referendum Forms

The Hotel Min Wage Referendum for GOCO Consulting differs from the standard California format. It has a birthdate field, but this is optional and serves no purpose, since the address has to match regardless.

For the referendum, a signing date is required on every line, and the signing date must include the year.

Special Addresses

Several counties use a catch-all house number such as 99900 or 99999. Catch-all house numbers match whatever house number is written on the petition.

Santa Barbara County: Addresses with hall names do not have a house number. Do not use -a0 on those. You will have to do custom searches on those. Room number is not required and does NOT need to match the db if written. Only the hall name needs to match. 0 (zero) for house number in the db means there is no house number. Voters do not need to write 0 in front of the hall name.

City of Hemet in Riverside County: Hwy 74 = Florida Ave.

City of Indio in Riverside County: Numeric street names are spelled out in the database (1st is First).

City of Carmel in Monterey County: There are no house numbers. Addresses are written like Carmelo & 9th. Do not use -a0 on those. Custom search Carmel by street name.