“Probably had a lot of invalid signatures.”
You mean to tell me, that there are liberals out there who would stoop so low as to intentionally and with malice, sign a phony name to a conservative petition all in an effort to make the petition fail?
No more like over zealous petitioners getting signature from anyone who was willing to sign. Then discovering they are invalid. Also possible people just did not want their name attached to anything political at this time.