Metropolitan News-Enterprise

 

Wednesday, August 17, 2022

 

Page 1

 

Cooley, Logan Clash Over Signature-Verification Laws

 

By a MetNews Staff Writer

 

Former Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley has criticized County Registrar-Recorder/Clerk Dean C. Logan for refusing to allow monitors to view the counting of signatures on petitions calling for an election to determine if District Attorney George Gascón should be recalled, but Logan insisted yesterday that he was following the dictates of a statute.

Logan’s office on Monday determined that recall proponents had produced 46,807 fewer valid signatures than the 566,857 that are required, with the recall proponents asserting that staff members counting the signatures had been too picky, in contravention of a provision of the Code of Regulation that went into effect in March creating a presumption of validity.

Cooley—a prime architect of the recall movement—said in a statement to the METNEWS late Monday:

A lot of questions must be pursued on how the register recorder invalidated nearly 200,000 signatures, the Recall proponents asked the registrar’ office a number of highly relevant questions over the past several weeks and received either no answer or an inadequate answer. The whole matter bears further scrutiny and it will receive same.”

Writ Petition

He noted that a writ proceeding cannot be instituted until after the 21-day period allotted by statute for proponents to review the signatures. The Committee to Recall District Attorney George Gascón had produced petitions with 715,833 signatures, but only 520,050 were determined to be valid.

Cooley commented:

“As for Dean Logan—the proof will be in the pudding! Right now he should answer legitimate questions that have been and will be asked of him. Having refused the Recall Committee’s request to merely have three observers view the process was not transparent on his part and created very poor optics for him.”

Logan Responds

Responding to that paragraph of Cooley’s statement, Logan said:

“The law is specific and clear that recall petitions and all memoranda prepared by our office are confidential, and only subject to inspection by proponents after a finding of insufficiency.”

He quoted Government Code §6253.5(a) which provides, with emphasis added by him:

“[Recall petitions] and all memoranda prepared by county elections officials in the examination of the petitions indicating which registered voters have signed particular petitions shall not be deemed to be public records and shall not be open to inspection except by the public officer or public employees who have the duty of receiving, examining or preserving the petitions or who are responsible for the preparation of that memoranda and, if the petition is found to be insufficient, by the proponents of the petition and the representatives of the proponents as may be designed in writing in order to determine which signatures were disqualified and the reasons therefor. However, the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, the Fair Political Practices Commission, a district attorney, a school district or a community college district attorney, and a city attorney shall be permitted to examine the material upon approval of the appropriate superior court.”

Logan remarked:

“We understand the proponents spent a great deal of time gathering signatures for the recall petition and desire a certain outcome from the verification. For that reason—and in compliance with the legal standards and guidelines—our focus throughout the examination and verification remained on completion within the legal timelines with integrity, appropriate quality review, and absent outside influence.”

Letter to Supervisors

In an Aug. 8 letter to the Board of Supervisors, attorney Miriam A. J. Thompson of Cooley’s office said that in light of “valid concerns” that Registrar-Recorder’s Office was “not following the appropriate laws and uniform guidelines during its examination” of signatures and to give that office “the opportunity to fulfill its mission of public transparency,” she made “multiple requests” to have monitors view the signature-counting. She wrote:

“Under the California Voter Bill of Rights, the proponents of a recall petition have the right to not only ask questions of elections official, but also to observe the election process. Signature verification of the recall petition is a part of the recall election process. (Elections Code § 2300(9)(a)). These requests were repeatedly denied for no apparent reason.”

That Elections Code provision says:

“You have the right to ask questions about election procedures and observe the election process.”

Thompson pointed to an emergency regulation issued in 2020 by the Secretary of State’s Office, codified this year, which provides that “[t]he comparison of a signature shall begin with the basic presumption that the signature on the petition…is the voter’s signature,” and declares:

“A signature that the initial reviewer identifies as possessing multiple, significant, and obvious distinctive differing characteristics from the signature(s) in the voter’s registration record shall only be rejected if two different elections officials unanimously find beyond a reasonable doubt that the signature differs in multiple, significant, and obvious respects from all signatures in the voter’s registration record.”

The lawyer commented that “[t]he reason the reasonable doubt standard” is applied in criminal cases “is because the stakes are high—a defendant’s liberty.” Noting that the standard is prescribed by the regulation on signature verification, she said:

“The stakes are high in the electoral process as well. A voter has the right to participate in the electoral process and have his or her vote count in our democracy. To reject a signature is to effectively disenfranchise a voter/petitioner.”

Thompson complained that the Registrar-Recorder’s Office was using 2017 materials and guidelines which contain standards differing from those now in effect.

 

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