Circulating a Grand Jury Has to Be Done Correctly
There are numerous laws on how Grand Jury petitions can be circulated.
- you can’t pay someone for their signature on a petition, offer prizes, or offer them anything of value.
- the Grand Jury petition signer has to be a resident of the county the Grand Jury will be covering.
- the signer has to be a registered voter at the time of signing the petition.
The petition circulator must:
- be 18 years old or older
- be present when ALL signatures are signed on their petition
- verify the ID of each signer, name, mailing address, residence address, and voter registration
- Use a smart phone, tablet, or laptop to verify voter registration at the provided website
- use only the legally approved Grand Jury Petition form
- fill out and sign the affidavit on the back in front of a notary
- notary seal must be present, the notary must sign the form, with expiration date of the notary filled out, expired commission notarized forms are rejected without counting
Do not allow:
- non county residents to sign
- non registered voters of that county or any other county to sign
- signatures when you are not present
- fake names to be used, no ID, no signing the petition
- offers of payment, prizes, gratuity, or anything of value in exchange for signing the petition
- copied Grand Jury Petition forms, use provided official provided forms only
- more than one signature per line
- signatures not on the provided signature line
- people to sign the petition more than once
- people to use fake addresses, no ID, no sign
In Oklahoma County we are required to gather 5000 signatures from Oklahoma County registered voters in order to force the judicial system to empanel a Grand Jury to investigate the corruption and crimes listed in the Grand Jury Petition. In smaller counties it is 16% of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election, minimum number is 500 signatures, maximum required is 5,000 on the first citizen Grand Jury filed and double that on any subsequent Grand Jury filed.
The petition gets filed with the District Court and the judge has a few days to approve or reject the petition for cause and tell us what the problem is so the petition can be corrected. Once the petition is approved we have 45 days to gather the 5000 signatures.
Once we turn in the petitions the Court Clerk copies everything, takes the originals to the local election board where each petition signature is checked against the voter rolls for name and address match. Once done the number of valid petition signers is announced and given to the District Court judge and if sufficient a Grand Jury must be empaneled within 30 days.
If you want to volunteer to circulate petitions please email us at info@grandjuryjustice.com or better, use the contact form below and we will contact you with more details. You can provide a petition signing location or take the petition to where the people are. If you have a business and are willing to use it as a signing location please provide the hours and days of operation.