The California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), a proposed initiative to codify far-reaching amendments to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and sometimes referred to as “CCPA 2.0”, is back in play and heading to the November 2020 ballot.  A series of dramatic procedural twists and turns culminated with initiative backers successfully obtaining a writ of mandate directing the Secretary of State to direct counties to verify signatures for the ballot proposal by the June 25th Constitutional deadline.  This verification involved each county conducting a random sample of the more than 800,000 signatures that proponents had submitted to place the initiative on the ballot.

Before the California court’s ruling, observers were skeptical that signatures could be verified before the deadline.  Initiative proponents were almost two weeks behind the recommended schedule when they delivered signatures to be verified by California’s 58 counties.  This meant counties had until June 26th to verify signatures — a day after the June 25th Constitutional deadline.  Experience with other initiatives this year had shown that several large counties were waiting until the deadline to complete verifications, so proponents petitioned the court to push the deadline up by a day in order to meet the Constitutional deadline.  The court agreed to do so, finding good cause existed to force counties to complete verifications a day early.  And, as it happened, the extra time was not needed, as counties finished the count two days ahead of their initial deadline.

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