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Gascón Recall Committee Dismisses Lawsuit
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The Recall DA George Gascon Committee announced yesterday that it is voluntarily dismissing its lawsuit against Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters Dean C. Logan, which sought to certify the recall petition as containing an adequate number of genuine signatures, in light of mootness given that no trial date is in sight.
It said, however, that its claim for attorney fees associated with its successful litigation over insufficient access to voter registration records will not be dropped.
In August 2022, the Registrar-Recorder’s Office declared that the committee had submitted 46,807 fewer valid signatures than are needed to qualify a recall for the ballot—a conclusion the committee challenged.
Committee’s Statement
The committee said in a written statement yesterday:
“After over a year and half of review and litigation, countless volunteer hours, mounting legal bills, and endless stonewalling tactics by the Registrar of Voters, the Recall Committee has decided to dismiss its lawsuit given the impending election and the fact that no trial date has been set despite its attempts to expedite the litigation. While this outcome was no doubt the intended result of the Registrar’s lack of transparency and endless delay tactics, the Committee’s work has nonetheless exposed the wrongful rejection of tens of thousands of valid signatures, bloated voter rolls, and flawed procedures.
“Although this should have happened last year, Los Angeles County residents will have an opportunity to vote George Gascon out of office in November, and Recall committee members and volunteers will be doing everything in their power to help make that happen. At the end of the day, this effort was and is about standing up for victims who have suffered as a direct result of Gascon’s radical, pro-criminal agenda.”
10 Percent Requirement
For a recall to qualify for the ballot, 10 percent of the registered voters must have signed a petition. That meant, the Registrar-Recorder’s Office maintained at the outset of the recall drive, that the committee needed to present 566,857 valid signatures.
However, the committee maintained in its petition for a writ of mandate and complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief:
“The Registrar has since admitted to the Committee, and others, in writing that Los Angeles County had only 5,438,400 active registered voters at the time—230,169 fewer than what he originally claimed….Furthermore, the Committee has determined that even this calculation included approximately 35,015 voters who should not have been identified as active voters in Los Angeles County—such as voters who had moved out of the county, voters who had moved out of state, duplicate registration files, and more.”
Disqualified Signatures
It contended that 540,338 signatures were actually required. The committee had submitted in excess of 715,000 signatures, but nearly 200,000 were disqualified.
The committee asserted that Logan’s office applied a presumption against genuineness, improperly utilizing standards set forth in an outmoded manual.
It said in its petition/complaint:
“[C]ontrary to the Registrar’s certification, the Committee submitted 546,234 valid signatures in support of the Recall Petition. This exceeds the number of signatures that were actually required to qualify the Recall Petition (540.338). The Registrar should thus have certified the Recall Petition as sufficient, and the Board of Supervisors should have ordered a recall election.”
The committee did prevail in its assertion that the Registrar-Recorder’s Office was improperly restricting access of its volunteers to the petitions, impeding its ability to gather evidence of unwarranted rejection of signatures. That matter is on appeal.
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