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Cal. ELEC § 9609

This is the official text of Cal. ELEC § 9609, part of California’s Elections Code — governs how elections are conducted, including voter registration, ballots, and campaign rules.

Not legal advice. This page reproduces the official text of a government statute for reference only. Laws change, and how a statute applies depends on your specific facts. For advice about your situation, consult a licensed attorney in your state.

Official statutory text

(a) Prior to allowing a person to circulate an initiative petition for signatures, the person, company official, or other organizational officer who is in charge of signature gathering shall execute and submit to the proponents a signed statement that reads as follows:

I, ___, acknowledge that it is a misdemeanor under state law (Section 18650 of the Elections Code) to knowingly or willfully allow the signatures on an initiative petition to be used for any purpose other than qualification of the proposed measure for the ballot. I certify that I will not knowingly or willfully allow the signatures for this initiative to be used for any purpose other than qualification of the measure for the ballot.
(Signature of Official)
Dated this ________ day of __________, 20___

(b) The certification required by subdivision (a) shall be kept on file by the proponents of the proposed initiative measure for not less than eight months after the certification of the results of the election for which the measure qualified, or if the measure, for any reason, is not submitted to the voters, eight months after the deadline for submission of the petition to the elections official.

(c) Failure to comply with this section shall not invalidate any signatures on a state or local initiative petition.

Status: in_force · Read it on the official government site

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About this page: Statute text is reproduced from official government publishers via the Open US Law dataset (Vaquill AI, snapshot v2026.08, CC BY 4.0). Primary legislative text like this is public domain under the government-edicts doctrine (Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). We link every section back to its official source so you can verify it independently.