You no doubt read recently that the Nevada Supreme Court ruled in favor of former Assemblywoman Sharron Angle, who is waging a lonely, misanthropic quest to cut funding for the firefighters, police officers, doctors, nurses and schoolteachers who make up the backbone of our communities in Nevada.

(We thought Angle had, once again, failed, until the ruling gave her vicious quest new life.)

The high court — quite correctly — found the Legislature had set a date too early for the filing of initiative petitions, such as Angle’s latest attempt to impose California-style property tax limitations in Nevada. The ruling expanded the signature-gathering period by nearly a month.

And, you’ve probably read that Angle’s initiative — thanks no doubt to the extra time — qualified in Clark County. (Under a highly suspect and probably unconstitutional law, the initiative also has to qualify in each of the other counties, with a varying number of signatures required in each. We are waiting now to hear the results of the canvass. The deadline is today.)

Now, you would think with Angle’s three previous failures to qualify this initiative, the experience of her failed bid for Congress and the extra time granted by the state Supreme Court, that she’d have finally made it, right?

Not so fast.

A law firm hired by the Nevada State Education Association has reviewed the petitions filed in Clark County, and discovered that the affidavit that’s supposed to be signed by the person who circulated the petition was not notarized on at least 832 pages, as required by law. And in the “vast majority” of those cases, the pages weren’t signed by anybody. That means those signature pages must not be counted as valid, the union’s attorneys say. (See the complaint for yourself, below.)

But wait, there’s more: Up in Carson City, one person signed the affidavit, but the address listed belongs to a different person, who also notarized the affidavit. That means either the notary circulated the petitions, and then notarized them, which makes the signatures invalid, or the first person circulated the petition and improperly filled out the affidavit, which also makes them invalid.

The Secretary of State has sent Angle a letter with the complaint attached. We’re guessing she’ll say something about the union wanting big, fat paychecks for its members, which only proves that Angle has no idea what they pay teachers these days. Besides, no amount of rhetoric can fill out defective petitions after they’ve been turned in.

Another Angle failure? It looks that way right now.

nsea-complaint.pdf

UPDATE: This just in, from the secretary of state’s office. According to county clerks across the state, Angle’s property tax petition does have enough signatures to quality. However, because of the challenge lodged by the NSEA described in this post, Secretary of State Ross Miller will not certify the petition for the ballot until the charges have been resolved. And that means Angle cannot celebrate victory just yet, or perhaps ever, since Miller has strictly interpreted the petition requirements on a series of other would-be ballot measures this year. Stay tuned, readers.