Is the heading font on Public Act 4 petitions too small? Yes! No! Maybe! Ack! (PHOTOS) – Updated

By on April 14, 2012 in Emergency Manager Law

Clear as mud

I was cleaning up my office today and came across a couple Public Act 4 repeal petitions. I thought it would be interesting to see how wrong the fonts are. Recall that Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility wants to toss out nearly a quarter million petition signatures because they say the heading font is smaller than the required 14-point boldface font (state regulation HERE (pdf).) They aren’t saying that the petition language itself is too small, just the heading.

Here’s the petition. The part we’re interested in is the bit that says “REFERENDUM OF LEGISLATION”.


Click for a larger version

The next thing I did was to try to find a font in Microsoft Word that matched the font on the petition. The best I could come up with was Arial Narrow. I printed up the “REFERENDUM OF LEGISLATION” in 12-point and 14-point boldface font and then compared them.

Here’s the 14-point font overlaid over the heading:

Click for a larger version

Now here’s the 12-point font overlaid over the heading:

Click for a larger version

Hah! They ARE wrong! Right? Not by much, probably less than a millimeter but WRONG! Right?

Not so fast. Look at the width comparison of the 12-point font:


Click for a larger version

Hmmm…with kerning differences (distance between letters) and the differences in the font itself, the petition font actually seems quite a bit bigger than 12-point. Let’s look at the 14-point:


Click for a larger version

Well look at that. The petition heading is exactly the same width as the 14-point font.

What’s the point of all this? The point is that the differences in fonts are such that “14-point” font is a bit of a loose term. It depends on which font you use and on the kerning. At the end of the day, the difference in height between 12-point and 14-point bold Arial Narrow font is literally one millimeter or less.

This is what we’re talking about:

Is that enough to justify throwing out nearly a quarter million citizens’ petition signatures? Obviously not, particularly when (a) the printer has produced a printers’ affidavit swearing the font is the required size and, just as importantly, (b) there is precedent to NOT do that.

Did I mention that Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility submitted their challenge to the Board of State Canvassers less than an hour before the 5:00 p.m. deadline last Monday?

I said it before and I’ll say it again: desperate.

UPDATE: If you didn’t catch Rachel Maddow’s piece on this last Wednesday, do yourself the favor of watching it now:


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  • http://twitter.com/elvisgrace elvisgrace

    Reading through the state regulations, although it specifies size, it doesn’t limit the typeface itself. Comic Sans? Papyrus? Bauhaus? So many possibilities!

    • Toka313

       You should be hurt for even suggesting comic sans…lol

      • http://twitter.com/elvisgrace elvisgrace

         Hey, it’s not like the petition’s coming my way!

      • CB_Demented

         I couldn’t disagree more. Comic Sans should be required for ALL government forms, heh.

    • David Conrad

      I think they would be perfectly justified in throwing out anything written in MS Comic Sans or Papyrus.

  • guest

    Not that it really matters, but just FYI, tracking is the spacing between the letters that you are referring to, kerning is spacing between only individual letters if you need to visually make them look better.

  • Grumpy Old Man

    It is called grasping at straws, about 1 mm thick.

  • David Conrad

    And “keming” is what it’s called when the kerning is off. ;^)

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  • Unadog

    Take a look at 14 Point in Adobe Arabic!  Really, really small compared to Arial, etc.

    I also like the fact that the Pub’s have to complain that the petition is in an Arabic font!  Bigots!  ;>)

    REFERENDUM
    FOR LEGISLATION

    REFERENDUM
    FOR LEGISLATION

  • Unadog

    Sorry – the font comparison worked in the comment box before I hit post. You gotta go try it yourself I guess.

    While you are at it, try every installed font while you are at it. I have at least 250 True-Type fonts on my non-graphics laptop. I’m sure I have thousands in my Adobe CS 5.5 Design Software.

    So these guys are Graphic Design experts now ….

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