Recall Petition signatures were improperly rejected
by Connie Lee

Last December, many people were shocked when the Orange County Registrar of Voters decided not to certify the petitions to recall all seven trustees of the Capistrano Unified School District. What happened?

The CUSD Recall Committee sent teams of inspectors to review the petition signatures rejected by the Registrar. The inspection results are quite disturbing. The Registrar improperly rejected thousands of valid petition signatures, thereby disenfranchising thousands of registered voters. 

For example, the Registrar rejected thousands of signatures claiming the signatories were not registered voters. Astonishingly, inspectors found the Registrar erred 24 percent of the time when rejecting these signatures. The Registrar should have validated roughly 700 additional signatures per trustee.

The Registrar rejected thousands of signatures by claiming that each signatory, while validly registered within CUSD boundaries, was registered at a different address. The registered voter had not updated his/her voter registration information. Since the Registrar allows these voters to vote in regular elections, should these signatures not count? This decision by the Registrar negated nearly 1,000 signatures per trustee.

The Registrar rejected thousands of signatures from registered voters who personally signed all seven recall petitions, claiming the voters may not have personally filled in their addresses on each petition. Despite numerous assurances from the Registrar’s office that petition gatherers could assist voters in filling in address information (a statute permits this), the Registrar excluded roughly 2,600 signatures per trustee for this reason alone. 

The Registrar liberally used at least eleven categories to reject thousands of signatures. Detailed results of the inspection can reviewed here .  

The CUSD Recall Committee submitted more than 177,000 petition signatures to recall all seven CUSD trustees. Each of these voters expected their voices would be heard. As the November elections draw near, the public has to have faith their votes will be accurately counted. Public institutions must work properly, but when they do not, people must find out why. In this case, many questions remain unanswered.

Was the Registrar’s Office properly staffed to review more than 177,000 petitions in 30 days? Were the employees at the Registrar’s Office properly screened and trained? Were employees overworked or preoccupied with handling upcoming special elections? Was there a bias in favor of the CUSD trustees?

Answers to these questions remain unknown. In order to protect the Constitutional rights of those who were disenfranchised and to preserve the public's confidence in the electoral system, the authorities need to investigate what went wrong at the Registrar’s office – and why. This is something all voters can agree upon, whether they supported the CUSD recall or not.