9011.5.
(a) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a state or local initiative, referendum, or recall petition that requires voter signatures and is paid for by a committee formed pursuant to Section 82013 of the Government Code shall include a disclosure statement that is displayed as follows:(1) The disclosure statement shall have a solid white background and shall be in a printed or drawn box with a black border and shall appear before that portion of the petition for voters’ signatures, printed names, and residence addresses. The text in the disclosure area shall be in a black Arial equivalent type with a type size of at least 10-point, with all lines centered horizontally in the disclosure area.
(2) The top of the disclosure shall include the text “Paid for by”, followed by the name of the committee. If the committee has any top contributors, it shall be followed by the text “Committee major funding from:”. The text specified in this paragraph shall be underlined.
(3) The top contributors, if any, shall each be disclosed on a separate horizontal line, in descending order, beginning with the top contributor who made the largest cumulative contributions on the first line.
(4) The following line shall include the text “Updated”, followed by the date the top contributors were calculated, followed by the text “Latest top contributors at www.fppc.ca.gov”. The text specified in this paragraph shall be underlined.
(5) The committee, in its discretion, may include the underlined text “Endorsed by:”, followed by a list, not underlined, of up to three endorsing individuals, corporations, or non-profit organizations that have been in existence for at least six months and receive contributions from 100 or more persons.
(6) The disclosure of a top contributor pursuant to this section need not include terms such as “incorporated,” “committee,” “political action committee,” or “corporation,” or abbreviations of these terms, unless the term is part of the contributor’s name in common usage or parlance.
(7) If this section requires the disclosure of the name of a top contributor that is a committee pursuant to subdivision (a) of Section 82013 and is a sponsored committee pursuant to Section 82048.7 with a single sponsor, only the name of the single sponsoring organization shall be disclosed.
(b) The disclosure statement required by subdivision (a) shall be updated within fourteen days of any change in the identities of the top contributors, unless the change is only a change in their order. A committee that employs one or more paid circulators shall ensure that their paid circulators use petitions with the updated disclosure within 21 days.
(c) A committee that employs one or more paid circulators to circulate a state initiative, referendum, or recall petition shall submit the disclosure statement required by subdivision (a), and any updates to that statement as required by subdivision (b), to the Secretary of State, who shall post that statement on the Secretary of State’s Internet Web site.
(d) As used in this section, “cumulative contributions” means the cumulative amount of contributions received by a committee beginning 12 months prior to the date the committee made its first expenditure to qualify or support the measure. Cumulative contributions totaling more than fifty thousand dollars ($50,000) shall be rounded to the nearest ten thousand dollars ($10,000).
(e) (1) As used in this section, “top contributors” means the persons from whom the committee paying for the petition has received its three highest cumulative contributions of fifty thousand dollars ($50,000) or more.
(2) If there is a tie between two or more contributors for the third highest cumulative contributions, then ties between top contributors shall be decided by chronological order starting with the first contributions.
(f) This section shall not be construed to require a local elections official to verify the accuracy of the information required by subdivision (a) or (b) or to reapprove the petition upon the update required by subdivision (b).
(g) Signatures collected on an initiative, referendum, or recall petition are not invalid solely because the information required by subdivision (a) or (b) was absent or inaccurate.