ND Fighting Sioux petitions have fewer names

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — North Dakota's secretary of state says the referendum petitions to restore the University of North Dakota's Fighting Sioux nickname have more than 400 fewer signatures than first advertised.

Al Jaeger says the petitions still have thousands more names than the minimum they need.

Jaeger has a month to review the petitions. He's done a count of the number of signatures listed. He says there are 16,770 names.

When organizers turned in the petitions, they said they had 17,213 names. Jaeger says some of them were for a separate initiated measure to put the Fighting Sioux nickname into the North Dakota Constitution.

The referendum petition needs signatures from at least 13,452 North Dakota voters. Jaeger will be checking the petition signatures over the next month to see if they are valid.

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