Rejection of Recall Wasn’t Reasonable
Letter to the editor

I was among Mission Viejo residents who attended the June 27 demurrer hearing before an Orange County Superior Court Judge regarding the attempted recall of Capistrano USD trustees. The case involved is a lawsuit filed by a group of CUSD parents after the Registrar of Voters threw out 35 percent of 177,000 recall signatures in December 2005. The lawsuit will progress on July 11 with a writ of mandate hearing.

One problem that hasn’t been discussed in newspapers was an error caused by the Registrar of Voters. When residents were signing the petitions last summer to recall all seven trustees, the petition pages were stapled together. Those signing would sign all seven petitions by turning pages. When the petitions were submitted to the Registrar of Voters, the officials required the petitions to be separated into seven stacks for the seven trustees. The Registrar’s decision was a fatal error that couldn’t be reconciled.

By separating the petitions, the seven stacks were in no particular order. It caused workers at the Registrar of Voters to look up and verify each signature – not one time but seven times. The overwhelming job of validating seven signatures of more than 25,000 voters became an impossible job of validating more than 177,000 signatures when the petitions were separated.

The Registrar of Voters had 30 working days to validate 177,000 signatures, and they blew the deadline. I saw the petitions after the count was certified, and entire pages of signatures were disqualified. Instead of admitting they didn’t have time to validate signatures, the Registrar gave bizarre reasons for throwing out entire pages. Thousands of signatures were disqualified as “not a registered voter.” Signature gatherers who rechecked voter information found a very high error rate in this category alone.

Voters have another chance to be heard this November when three CUSD trustees are up for reelection. It would be somewhat of a consolation prize to get three of them out of office.

Connie Lee
Mission Viejo