SECTION 1.
The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:(a) Under the California Constitution, an initiative or referendum measure may be proposed by presenting to the Secretary of State a petition containing a specified number of signatures. The California Constitution requires that a petition for a referendum measure be submitted within 90 days of the date of enactment of the statute that is the subject of the referendum, and state law requires that a petition for an initiative measure be submitted within 150 days of the date of the circulating title and summary furnished by the Attorney General.
(b) In some instances, the final day to submit an initiative or referendum petition falls on a holiday, when the offices of state and county elections officials are closed. In those circumstances, the proponents of an initiative or referendum measure are faced with the choice of either submitting the petition prior to the holiday, in which case the period to gather signatures would be reduced, or submitting the petition after the holiday, in which case the proponents would risk rejection of the petition as untimely.
(c) While the California Constitution specifies a period of 90 days to gather signatures for a referendum measure, it gives no guidance as to how to construe the 90-day period in those instances in which the final day falls on a holiday.
(d) The courts of this
state have long held that the initiative and the referendum are sacred rights of the people and provisions of law shall be liberally construed to give full effect to the powers of initiative and referendum.
(e) The framers of the California Constitution did not intend that the powers of initiative and referendum should be frustrated by the mere happenstance that the final day to submit a petition falls on a holiday.
(f) It is a general and well-accepted rule of law that, when the last day to perform an act falls on a holiday, the time in which to perform that act is extended to the next business day.
(g) It is the intent of the Legislature in enacting this act to preserve the people’s rights of initiative and referendum by
clarifying that, in those instances in which the final day to submit a petition falls on a holiday, the proponents of the initiative or referendum measure may submit the petition on the next business day following the holiday.