Primary Election Lawsuit

Kusi News (2016-06-28)

This Page: https://copswiki.org/Common/M1665
Media Link: http://www.kusi.com/story/32330810/primary-election-lawsuit%20type%3d%22html%22
More Info: Election Integrity, Election Audit Lawsuit

SAN DIEGO (KUSI) — A court case has been filed against the Registrar of Voters for not including all votes when he conducted an audit as required by law.

It charges the Registrar of short cutting the process in violation of the state elections code.

Many of the votes not counted, some 40,000 ballots, could be Bernie Sanders supporters. A clean audit would likely change the outcome of the primary, but have they been disenfranchised?

This is all about a 1 percent audit of voters registrars are required to do by state election laws and it's supposed to be done after all the ballots are in.

Citizen's Oversight filed the suit, saying the registrar began the audit before all the votes were in.

"What they're doing instead is excluding about 40 percent of the ballots from view and selecting them in an improper way, we believe, and comparing with only a partial results of the computer results so it's a real mess," said Ray Lutz of the Citizen's Oversight.

Lutz had asked the registrar to wait and include all ballots and allow access to view everything the Registrar's Office was doing relative to which ballots should be counted. He was worried about any misconduct or even hacking by an employee.

"Many people were pushed to the provisional pile and guess what those are not included in the 1 percent manual tally, so it's not audited so we have no control of any malfeasance going on," Lutz said.

"People are supposed to be able to look at every aspect of the operation: 39 from the computer rooms to the back rooms to the ballot boxes," said Attorney Alan Geraci.

Geraci will argue this case at the court hearing.

"The intention of the elections code is obviously to create an audit so that the people can know that the election was done properly, that there's integrity, that there's no mistakes being made," Geraci said.

"The 1 percent manual tally has an important function that allows for the election process to be trusted," he added.

Lutz said this is all about preserving the checks and balances of the elections process, which he claims the registrar is eroding.

"Nearly 40 percent of the election of the ballots here are not under the scrutiny of that check and balance," he said.

The court hearing is July 6. The question is will this case be moved up and decided before the registrar certifies the election results on July 7.

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