Approximately 2,300 Anaheim residents had signed rescission cards asking to have their signatures removed from Disney's referendum petition. Protect Anaheim was poised to turn in thousands of additional rescission cards today and has been gathering rescission cards at a clip of several hundred per day.
That may be why Disney/SOAR decided to turn in their signatures this morning instead continuing to gather referendum signatures for the remaining three days available to them.
According to Protect Anaheim spokesman Frank Elfend:
"We are not surprised by the 21,000 raw signatures submitted to the City today, once we learned that The Disney Corporation was paying in excess of $10.00 per signature. We believe that the reason The Disney Corporation chose to submit their signatures several days before the deadline was because they were aware of the steady growing numbers of Anaheim residents who had requested their signatures be withdrawn from the Referendum Petition."
"Conversely, over the last few months, over 18,000 Anaheim households have shared their support for the City Council’s action in approving this project, and concurrently voicing their disapproval of The Disney Corporation’s heavy handed tactics."
The Anaheim City Clerk turned the signatures and rescission cards over to the Orange County Registrar of Voters today for verification, which should be completed in approximately two weeks.
