Notwithstanding any other provision of law to the contrary, if an independent candidate submits an in-lieu-filing-fee petition pursuant to Section 8106, the county elections official, upon the request of the candidate, shall accept all valid signatures appearing on the candidate’s in-lieu-filing-fee petition toward the number of signatures required to be submitted on an in-lieu-filing-fee petition and on a nomination paper.
If the in-lieu-filing-fee petition does not contain the requisite number of signatures required under Section 8400, the candidate shall be entitled to file, within the time period allowed for filing nomination papers, a nomination paper in order to obtain the requisite number of valid signatures required to be submitted to the elections official pursuant to this chapter.