More than 60 percent of the signatures that petitioners submitted to City Hall to force a referendum on Iowa City's 21-and-older bar entry age are invalid, the city clerk's office said Tuesday.
Coming on the same day 19- and 20-year-olds were shut out of all Iowa City bars for the first time, the setback called into question a public vote on the issue in November, which had seemed like a foregone conclusion when petitioners filed hundreds of pages of signatures in May.
Of the 3,300 names that were submitted in a drive led by University of Iowa students and bar management, only 1,273 were validated by the city clerk's office, which finished cross-checking signatures with voter rolls on Saturday.
That means petitioners are short 1,227 of the necessary 2,500 signatures to force a referendum on 21-only. They will have 15 days upon acknowledging receipt of a "certificate of insufficiency" that was issued by the city to make up the difference.
Um, ooooooops! And the timing for the opponents of 21 only couldn't possibly be worse, as the majority of student have gone home for the summer. But we'll see if they can make up the difference in the required 15 days. If not, then 21 only stays for the next school year at the very least.
Interesting point though- one that's been raised by TheQuietMan several times in our coversations: why are people so eager to knock it down before they know what's going to actually happen? Why not try 21 only for a year and then, after that year is up, review the stats, review the arrests and see what happened. Maybe it works, maybe it makes things worse, maybe it has no impact whatsoever. The only way to know for sure though, is to try the ordinance out to see what goes down. But, it'll be interesting to see what happens...
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