Plastic bag referendum supporters submitted signatures

Plastic bag ban referendum supporters said they submitted more than 800,000 signatures to the Secretary of State’s Office on January 29th for the ballot initiative.

They need just more than 500,000 to qualify.

Now counties must go through the signatures to determine how many are valid by February 24th.

If there are enough signatures, the ban would be postponed until after the November 2016 election.

Environmentalists who support the bag ban believe the law will prevail.

Mark Murray of Californians Against Waste said, “At the end of the day, if there is a vote on this proposal, then bring it on, we are not afraid of a statewide vote on the bag ban. We know that the public supports this, and we are confident that we can prevail at the election… regardless of the status of that, we don’t want to see voters mislead.”

As of right now, there are still 138 local plastic bag bans that will stay in place.