§ Article 13Preliminary Examination of Citizens’ Petition to Call Referendum

1. The Central Electoral Committee shall verify within 15 days the received documents on calling the referendum. The Central Electoral Committee, having determined that the documents meet the requirements of this Law, shall give to the Seimas the final act along with the citizen’s petitions and its own conclusion.
2. The Central Electoral Committee, having established that the documents contain non-essential deficiencies or that very few (up to 0.5 per cent) of the citizens’ signatures are missing, shall inform the group thereof and set a 15 - day time limit to eliminate these deficiencies. Having eliminated these deficiencies over the prescribed period of time, the petition to call a referendum shall be examined further according to general procedure.
3. Should the time limit for the implementation of the citizens’ right of initiative to call a referendum be violated, the required number of citizens’ signatures fail to be collected or should it be determined that gross violations of the law (falsified citizens’ signatures or a violation of the principle of voluntariness in collecting signatures) exist in the submitted documents, the Central Electoral Committee shall refuse the petition to call a referendum, based upon a reasoned decision and inform the group and the Seimas thereof. The group shall have the right to appeal this decision to the Superior Administrative Court of Lithuania within the period of one month.
4. Should it be determined that a citizen has signed two or more times for calling the same referendum, all of his signatures shall not be counted. Signatures shall also not be counted, if in violation of paragraph 4 of this Article 11, the data about the citizen are entered on the signature sheet by someone else, and also, if all of the data set forth in this Law have not been included, or if they have been rendered falsely.