California: Top Two Primary Fight Heads to Federal Appeals Court | Business & Election Law

The legal battle surrounding California’s controversial Top Two Primary has reached an influential federal appeals court.

This afternoon, a federal trial court refused to put California’s controversial new election regime on hold.  In response, Plaintiffs Michael Chamness, Daniel Frederick, and Rich Wilson immediately asked the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse the lower court’s decision.

Earlier, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals made a key ruling:  it allowed in critical evidence that directly challenges the legality of the Top Two Primary.

California: Tight-lipped ballot thief to be set free, 50 days later than expected | San Francisco Examiner

A man accused of stealing ballots from a San Francisco polling station last November will be set free Wednesday after staying in jail for 50 days longer than necessary because of his conduct during a series of bizarre court appearances.

Karl Bradfield Nicholas, 51, was accused of taking about 75 ballots, a voter roster, a cellphone, and a memory box and access key to a voting machine on Knott Court in the city’s Crocker Amazon neighborhood where he was working as a voting station inspector on Nov. 2, 2010. Nicholas was arrested the next day, and the ballots were later found in the lagoon at the Palace of Fine Arts. He has been in custody ever since. The memory box, access key and cellphone have yet to be found.

Nicholas was set to be freed last month after pleading guilty in December to a felony count of tampering with voting machines and ballots in exchange for a year in county jail and other penalties, although he later tried to withdraw the plea.

California: New primary system could shake up California politics | SignOnSanDiego.com

California voters will engage in a new election process next year that does away with traditional political party nominations and replaces them with primaries that could result in two candidates from the same party squaring off in the general election. In the so-called top-two primary election in June, state and congressional candidates of all parties will appear on the same ballot, allowing all voters to choose nominees without partisan constraints.

The new election system, approved by voters last November, will go into effect after the once-a-decade redrawing of political districts was done for the first time by an independent citizens commission, rather than the politicians themselves.

Proponents say the top-two primary, along with the new districts, will spur competition, help guard against spoiler candidates and potentially lead to more moderate lawmakers being elected. They further hope a new dynamic will emerge to lessen partisan rancor. But critics contend the new primary will limit choice, drive up the cost of campaigning and spell the end of third-party candidates.

California: Will mail ballots be a victim of budget? | PressDemocrat.com

In 1979, a year after voters adopted Proposition 13 and tightly limited property taxes, they decreed in another ballot measure that the state should reimburse schools and local governments for state-mandated costs they incur.

That seemingly straightforward decree, however, has evolved into a chronically convoluted wrangle over what is, and what is not, a reimbursable cost and how much money should flow from Sacramento into local coffers.

Thousands of school districts, cities, counties and special districts, the governor’s Department of Finance, legislative committees, lawyers, a special state bureaucracy called the Commission on State Mandates — and sometimes the courts — are enmeshed in a process that can be likened to a laboratory rat on a treadmill, running ever-faster but going nowhere.

California: Suspected Ballot Thief Refuses To Take Mental Competency Test | KTVU

A man accused of stealing ballots from a San Francisco polling station will remain in jail indefinitely after refusing to talk to doctors who were appointed to determine his mental competency, a judge ruled Monday. Karl Bradfield Nicholas, 51, could likely have been out of jail more than a month ago, but a series of bizarre court appearances have kept him in custody beyond the sentence he had agreed to as part of a plea deal.

Nicholas is accused of taking about 75 ballots, a voter roster, and a memory box and access key to a ballot-counting machine on Knott Court in the city’s Crocker Amazon neighborhood where he was working as a voting station inspector on Nov. 2, 2010. Nicholas was arrested the next day, and the ballots were later found in the lagoon at the Palace of Fine Arts. He has been in custody ever since. The memory box and access key have yet to be found.

California: Mental status of San Francisco’s ballot thief to be determined | San Francisco Examiner

Doctors are set to cast their votes today on whether a former San Francisco poll worker who stole dozens of ballots on Election Day is crazy. On the eve of his possible release from jail last month, 51-year-old Karl Bradfield Nicholas was thrown back into a cell after giving the judge the silent treatment.

The Gandhi-esque snub was the latest in a string of bizarre behavior that caused Superior Court Judge Anne Bouliane to order a psychiatric evaluation.

California: State vote-by-mail action taken in stride locally | Ukiah Daily Journal

The state’s plan to cut out reimbursement to counties for vote-by-mail ballots won’t affect Mendocino County much, according to Registrar of Voters Sue Ranochak. The state Legislature passed a bill in its 2011-12 budget that aims to save $33 million by suspending state mandates that require counties to process voter registration applications received by mail and to send vote-by-mail ballots to voters who apply for them, among other mandates suspended.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen opposes the suspensions, saying they could cause confusion and disenfranchise voters, and Ranochak concurs, along with about 45 other counties represented at a recent meeting. “I’m going to follow what the secretary of state recommends,” Ranochak said. “It’s important that people vote.”

Not that the suspensions change much for Mendocino County, according to Ranochak. She explained that the county pays all costs up front for each election, then waits for reimbursement from the state, which can take anywhere from six months to two years.

California: Vote-by-mail service under threat in California budget cuts | San Jose Mercury News

California’s beloved vote-by-mail system will remain largely intact, despite state legislators’ raid on its relatively small pot of dollars. County election clerks say they likely will scrape up the $33 million the state sliced from the budget for elections. Permanent vote-by-mail allows voters to sign up once and automatically receive ballots. Under the old system, voters who wished to vote by mail requested a ballot each election.

Nearly half of the 10.3 million residents who cast ballots in November did so through the mail. The percentage topped the halfway mark in most counties, offering further evidence that voting by mail has become an indispensable feature for many.

However, the fact that the fate of permanent vote-by-mail service rests with each of California’s 58 counties now that the state suspended reimbursement is prompting voting rights advocates to rekindle their calls for a stronger state role in elections. California’s decentralized election system means counties could “decide to eliminate the permanent vote-by-mail option,” said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation. “Voter access is already uneven from county to county, and the suspension of the mandates is only going to make it worse.

“What do we tell voters when they want to know if they can vote by mail?”

California: State says it won’t pay, and counties don’t have to distribute mail-in ballots | Contra Costa Times

The state will not reimburse Butte County and other county election offices to send out vote-by-mail ballots for the next year, a service half the county’s registered voters use rather than lining up at the polls.

Butte County Registrar of Voters Candace Grubbs plans to report the issue to the Board of Supervisors and its effects at their Tuesday meeting. Of 116,493 registered voters in Butte County as of Friday, 58,048 checked the box to receive ballots in the mail, according to the Butte County Registrar of Voters Office.

“County elections officials have the option of providing vote-by-mail ballots to any voter who requests one for any reason, but if they do, they will not be reimbursed for the cost of doing so in the 2011-12 fiscal year,” wrote Lowell Finley, deputy secretary of state, in a memo to all county registrar of voters.

California: Budget cuts may end mail-in ballots, registration | San Francisco Chronicle

Buried on page 620 of the state budget are a few small cuts that could change the way Californians vote.

To save $33 million, the bill suspended several state mandates requiring counties to provide voting services that many Californians take for granted. The state no longer requires counties to process all voter registration applications they receive by mail or to send out vote-by-mail ballots to anyone who wants one. Counties still could provide these services, and many probably will, but they won’t be reimbursed by the state.

California: Internet Voting In California? | California Progress Report

Election integrity advocates recently launched a campaign to block a bill, SB908, that would have introduced email voting for Californians living overseas. We fought it for several reasons.

First, paperless voting itself is dangerous because there is no independent way to check the results claimed by the machines, and no way to recover when something goes wrong, and it will. Voting across the Internet is worse, because it opens up the voting system to several more types of attack, from anywhere in the world, all of them dangerous. Voting by email attachment is even worse, because no attempt is made to encrypt the ballot as it travels from computer to computer across the globe on the way to its destination.

Any of these computers is quite capable of “photoshopping” or simply blocking any ballot that passes through. A ballot sent from Afghanistan could pass through computers in China, Iran, Russia, or any other country interested in “fixing” ballots headed for California. This is only one of several severe vulnerabilities in Internet voting.

California: Yamada bill for all-mail ballot voting goes to governor | Daily Democrat

A bill that would bring an all-mail voting pilot project to Yolo County has gone to Gov. Jerry Brown for his signature. The bill overcame its last legislative hurdle Thursday, passing the Assembly Floor on a 50-19 vote.

“An important feature of this bill is the data that will be collected about the effects of all-mail ballot voting. The study element featured in this bill could help guide the future of elections in California,” said the bill’s sponsor Assemblywoman Mariko Yamada, D-Davis.

“I am proud to have received support on both sides of the aisle this year. This practical bill will give local governments an opportunity to save thousands of dollars per election.”

California: Ballot Thief To Be Held Indefinitely After String Of Bizarre Court Hearings | KTVU

A man accused of stealing ballots from a San Francisco polling station last November is being held indefinitely after criminal proceedings against him were suspended today because of a judge’s doubts about his mental competency.

Karl Bradfield Nicholas, 51, is accused of taking about 75 ballots, a voter roster, and a memory box and access key to a ballot-counting machine on Knott Court in the city’s Crocker Amazon neighborhood where he was working as a voting station inspector on Nov. 2, 2010.

Nicholas was arrested the next day, and the ballots were later found in the lagoon at the Palace of Fine Arts. The memory box and access key have yet to be found, and Nicholas has been in custody ever since.

California: Vote-suppression complaints filed in testy congressional election | latimes.com

As voters headed to the polls Tuesday to decide a hard-fought special congressional election in the South Bay area, attorneys for Democrat Janice Hahn filed complaints alleging that supporters of her opponent, Republican Craig Huey, were trying to suppress turnout of her voters.

In a letter sent Tuesday to the Los Angeles County district attorney, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles and the California attorney general, Hahn lawyers Stephen J. Kaufman and Steven J. Reyes asked for immediate investigations into “voter suppression actitivies” in the 36th Congressional District race.

The attorneys said several voters reported receiving telephone calls Monday night telling them the election had been postponed to Wednesday at Hahn’s request ,and others were given wrong polling place addresses.

California: CA-36: Robocalls telling voters the election is moved to Wednesday? | Politico.com

This was inevitable: An early complaint of voter suppression in California’s special House election. Janice Hahn’s campaign has filed a complaint with the state Attorney General to investigate “several reports” of calls to voters that Tuesday’s election had been moved to Wednesday.

According to Hahn’s attorney, other voters received calls including “incorrect polling information.”

One voter received a call Monday morning saying, “Called to let you know that the election has been moved to Wednesday, per Janice Hahn’s request.  Thanks, bye.”

California: San Francisco Ballot Thief Gives Judge Silent Treatment | KTVU

A man accused of stealing ballots from a San Francisco polling station last November seems determined not to get out of jail after giving the silent treatment to the judge at his sentencing hearing Monday.

Karl Bradfield Nicholas, 51, was set to receive a one-year sentence but would likely have been set free today because of credit for time already served. Instead, he was to be held for at least two additional days for a mental health examination.

The silent treatment was the latest in a series of bizarre hearings involving the case, in which Nicholas was accused of taking ballots, a voter roster, and a memory box and access key to a voting machine on Knott Court in the city’s Crocker Amazon neighborhood where he was working as a voting station inspector on Nov. 2, 2010.

California: San Francisco mayoral election to change shape as ranked-choice voting debuts | San Francisco Examiner

Gone are the days when voting was as simple as voting for the best person you most want to see serve. When voters head to the polls on Nov. 8, they will be asked to vote for not only who they want to win the most to serve as San Francisco’s mayor, but also their second and third choices.

For a chart detailing how ranked-choice voting played a role in Jean Quan’s surprise Oakland mayoral election victory, click on the photo to the right.

This way of voting for San Francisco’s mayor has yet to be tested in a citywide race — this is the first time what is known as ranked-choice voting will come into play in the race for The City’s top post.

California: Online voter registration moves closer in California | Central Valley Business Times

Legislation that would allow Californians to register to vote via their county’s election office website has been approved by the Assembly Elections and Redistricting Committee.

If the measure makes it into law, California would joins several other states that already offer online registration. California has lagged behind awaiting implementation of the statewide online database system known as VoteCal, which has been delayed until at least 2015.

SB 397, authored by Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, also puts into place greater safeguards to fraud than the current paper registration process.

California: Sentencing Delayed For San Francisco Ballot Thief | KTVU

A man who pleaded guilty to stealing ballots from a polling station he was working at in San Francisco’s Crocker Amazon neighborhood last November was set to be released next week but will stay in jail a little while longer after a bizarre sentencing hearing Thursday.

Karl Bradfield Nicholas, 51, had pleaded guilty to stealing the ballots, a voter roster, and a memory box and access key to a voting machine from the station on Knott Court where he was working as a poll worker supervisor on Election Day, Nov. 2, 2010. Nicholas was arrested early the next day and the ballots were later found in the lagoon at the Palace of Fine Arts, prosecutors said.

California: Dean Logan and Michael Alvarez: Needed – a 21st century voter registration system for California | San Francisco Chronicle

The world looks to California for 21st century innovation, especially for the application of technology that makes life less costly and more efficient.

Californians are well into the 21st century, working in the cloud, using smart phones and tablet computers, and getting their entertainment on-demand by satellite. But when it comes to voter registration, California seems to be stuck in the 18th century. State law won’t allow eligible citizens in our state to register online until at least 2015 — and maybe much later.

California: Report finds Santa Clara County California mail-in ballot hiccup may have impacted local races | Inside Bay Area

Santa Clara County election officials sent more than 7,500 mail ballots to the wrong addresses during last June’s election, unwittingly canceling votes cast by some South Bay residents even as those living out of state received ballots.

A report released Friday from the county’s civil grand jury concludes the Registrar of Voters does not follow the proper procedures to avoid errors when mailing out ballots to people who have recently moved.

California: Transparency Project nabs federal grant; money to be used to augment post-election audit project, allow for duplication elsewhere | Times-Standard Online

A local project that uncovered a fatal flaw in Humboldt County’s old elections system just got some national recognition that may ultimately lead to its becoming the standard rather than the exception. The federal Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) officially notified the Humboldt County Elections Office this week that it was receiving a $25,000 grant to…

California: Secretary of State Bowen concedes in California race | POLITICO.com

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen conceded Thursday in the special election race for a vacant Southern California congressional seat, handing a surprising second-place finish to little-known Republican Craig Huey. Huey, a wealthy advertising executive who spent $500,000 out of his own pocket, will face Democratic Los Angeles Councilwoman Janice Hahn in a July 12 runoff.…

California: An interview with California Secretary of State Debra Bowen | Daily Kos

Earlier this year, Congresswoman Jane Harman resigned her seat in Congress, triggering a special election in California’s reliably Democratic 36th Congressional district. Sixteen candidates have filed for the May 17 special election; under California’s newly adopted primary system, the top two finishers in that election will advance to a July runoff, regardless of party. Widely…