San Diego has 110,786 reasons to be optimistic about the Chargers staying in town.
On Friday, the Committee for Sports, Entertainment and Tourism in San Diego delivered 83 boxes containing 110,786 signatures to be filed with San Diego City Clerk Elizabeth Maland.
"On behalf of the entire San Diego Chargers organization, we want to thank every registered San Diego City voter who signed the petition," San Diego Chargers chairman Dean Spanos said in a statement. "We also want to thank representatives of organized labor -- and particularly the unions of the Building Trades Council -- for their significant help and support during this process. And we are grateful for the volunteer signature gathering work coordinated by the fan groups, including Save Our Bolts and the San Diego Stadium Coalition. The fan groups did a great job, as did the hundreds of other people who contacted us and volunteered to gather signatures.
"Most signature gathering efforts of this kind take six full months. We had just six weeks to complete our work," Spanos continued. "The fact that we were able to collect more than 110,000 signatures in that short period of time demonstrates tremendous support in our community for a new, combined stadium-convention center expansion downtown."
The Bolts were required to get 66,447 valid signatures from registered San Diego voters to get a measure on the ballot. The registrar's office has 30 days to determine how many signatures are valid.
Skepticism still remains about whether the ballot measure will pass with a simple majority or if the Chargers need two-thirds of the vote. Several San Diego political leaders remain on opposite sides about the proposed plan to build a downtown stadium in city.
