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!!!!

[lonestarnot]

1. Damn it!

Keep fighting!

[spag68]

2. I know it's a small thing,

but here's hoping that they actually get counted.

[rumpel]

3. .....

"In this case, Haas has said that that he cannot comply with the Secretary of State's directives to make paper ballots available to any voter who wants one, and to treat them as normal ballots, because Haas believes it would be "inconvenient" for him to do that."

HUH?!

[rumpel]

4. I have 14 judge elections on my ballot...

I have to look them over again.

[Zorro]

7. Voting for judges is easy for me

It's always a default "no", in case I actually know something positive about them.

Too often one is presented with a list of unknowns to vote for. I don't know what goes on inside a person's mind who is running for a political office, but doesn't submit any candidate statement to be included with the voting materials we get from the state. I know judicial positions are non-partisan, but unless there's something known to compel me to vote for a candidate, I won't do that.

[flordehinojos]

9. there was a judge standing with a "vote for Judge XXXX" placard on my way to early voting one day.

The judge approached me as i was walking into the early voting precinct to ask that i vote for the judge. When I asked the judge, "are you a republican or democrat", the judge became very angry. Said the judge could not answer the question because it would be breaking the law!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
and proceeded to go on a rant about the question i had just asked.

I stood there opened mouth. First of all we are asked to vote for judges and we are not told what party affiliation they have. Secondly, they are not supposed to rule from their ideology, they are supposed to rule based on the law. Thirdly, in the bush/reagan/bush world what judge in tarnation has not ruled from their ideology????????????????????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[cascadiance]

11. The problem is... That Ahnuld might be replacing them...

I voted no on Ikola, as I found cases where I didn't care for how he ruled, and he was nominated by a Republican too, and thought about no on a few others. But if we default to vote "no" without looking at their record, we might throw out a relatively decent judge and have Ahnuld replace them with someone worse. We need to have our own "activist judge" watch site that keeps track of these judges and when bad decisions go down, they get recorded and therefore "remembered" for the next time we have to vote on them.

That will do two things. First it will help us weed out the bastards and keep in the good ones. And secondly, perhaps it will serve notice to judges that we WILL be watching them, and that they might want to watch how they rule if they want to have a long term future in their judicial positions.

If you don't know anything about a judge, I'd urge not voting at all, if you can't find the time to study up on them. There are some Republican nominated judges that have had courage like turning over custody of a kid to a gay man's partner who had custody of the kid before, instead of the kid's birth mother who hadn't been in the kid's life for some time.

[bananas]

5. One more vote please...

put this on the greatest page, for whatever it's worth...
Thank you.

[TomClash]

6. Appeal nt

[flordehinojos]

8. judges are not supposed to let ideology become their rule of law...

this judge seems to be a bush asswipe and should when possible be removed from the bench.

[Toots]

10. Then we'll have to vote them out with a SOLID NO!!!!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: How you going to do that with their fixed machines? :rofl: :rofl:

[MindPilot]

12. KLSD callers reporting many problems with e-voting in SD

Several callers from around the county have reported long waits because of inoperative machines. One person from Kensington said he voted in a hall which is the polling place for two precincts. One of those is the precinct of Mayor Sanders and all the media was there to watch him vote. Of course all their machines were working while 10 feet away the other precinct had only about 10% of their machines operational.

Another caller said the poll workers at his place had lost track of which e-voting cards had been used and which were new. One woman said the line was too long because poll workers couldn't get the machines running and she had to leave before voting; about ten people followed her out.