San Diego Judge Denies Writ Seeking to Force County to Count Paper Ballots as 'Normal Ballots' ...

[cascadiance]

... as Ordered by CA Secretary of State

Hot off the wire from Brad's Blog, and just heard about it talking to Paul Lehto a few moments ago...

Sounds like we have another right wing judge that's not letting justice see the light of day here in San Diego county. They just denied having paper ballots counted as "regular ballots". Which means, if you vote on paper here, your vote will likely not get counted until Thursday, which will make it look like the Republicans who voted touch screen will have done a lot better than they probably have initially.

From Brad's Blog:

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3740

LOGGED BY Brad ON 11/6/2006 9:18PM
San Diego Judge Denies Writ Seeking to Force County to Count Paper Ballots as 'Normal Ballots' as Ordered by CA Secretary of State
Registrar Mikel Haas' Promise to Defy the SoS and NOT Count Paper Ballots Until Thursday Moves Forward…
VelvetRevolution.us Helping to Fund Appeal

The lawsuit brought last week in San Diego to force Registrar Mikel Haas to obey an order from the Secretary of State's office that paper ballots should be counted as "normal ballots" was denied in San Diego Superior Court today.

The writ, originally filed in Appeals Court last week, was denied on jurisdictional grounds and refiled in the Superior Court. Due to time constraints at that point, the section of the complaint seeking to stop voting machine "sleepovers" (which have now been ongoing for a full three weeks in the county) was dropped when the case was re-filed.

The denial today, which had also sought to force Haas to inform San Diego voters at the polls of their right to vote on a paper ballot, will be appealed according to Carlsbad, CA attorney Ken Simpkins. Election Integrity organization VelvetRevolution.us' Strike Force continues to raise money to fund such court actions, as it did with the original filing and several others — including the contested Francine Busby/Brian Bilbray special U.S. House election last Summer.

I spoke with Simpkins earlier today about the court ruling and the Judge who didn't seem to understand the differences between provisional, absentee and "normal ballots". Paper ballots, requested by any California voter, are supposed to be counted as "normal ballots" on election night, according to a memo from the CA SoS.

I tried to find who the judge was on this case, and found in this article here:

http://sandiego.indymedia.org/en/2006/11/120536.shtml

... that it looks like they almost got Yuri Hoffman again (who earlier ruled on that infamous ruling that we didn't have jurisdiction of Dennis Hastert's bogus actions). At the last minute it sounds like they put Luis Vargas on this case. I guess we'll have to wait to confirm that he was the one that issued this ruling. Unfortunately both Mr. Hoffman, and Mr. Vargas both had uncontested races in the primaries in June:

http://www.smartvoter.org/2006/06/06/ca/sd/race/030/

http://www.smartvoter.org/2006/06/06/ca/sd/race/052/

So unfortunately, unless someone else from the Fourth Circuit Appeals court got assigned who is getting a retention vote for this time, we can't express our displeasure in the polls!

If it was Vargas that issued this ruling, we'll have to keep this in our memories the next time that he and Hoffman run for election again. Then we'll have to vote them out with a SOLID NO!!!!