Price Recall Signatures Move to Hand Count/Verification as Local Process Moves into “Uncharted Territory”
Though the Price Recall group SAFE turned in what proponents have claimed is 123,374 signatures nearly two weeks ago—nearly double the 73,195 needed to trigger an Alameda County [ALCO] District Attorney recall election—the Alameda County recall saga may have just begun. On Thursday, the 10-day ALCO charter deadline to verify each signature entry, ALCO Registrar Tim Dupuis announced that the process had not succeeded in verifying the signatures. Dupuis declared the ROV would continue the process in a 30-day manual count and verification of the signatures, ushering the already wobbly recall into a new phase of uncertainty.
Buffet Style Recall Process
Dupuis, the County's Registrar of Voters [ROV], has stated in public comments and in written policy guidelines that the ROV is referring to a buffet-style process patched together from charter rules and state rules—referring to the latter whenever Dupuis and County counsel view the former as either untenable or unconstitutional. Throughout the process, lawyers for Pamela Price’s campaign team have argued that the County’s interpretation of law and process are questionable. Lawyers for the Price campaign sent Dupuis a letter last week after SAFE turned in signatures, reminding him, among other issues, that the charter gives only ten days to verify signatures, not the more expansive state time limit.
Given the ROV’s own statements questioning the feasibility of a ten-day verification and the large number of signatures, questions about the process have swirled for days. Despite there being no signature verification method laid out in the charter, Dupuis has relied on the state methodology during the ten day verification, sampling 5% of the signatures for compliance. Iin the state method, if the sample’s verified signatures are found to proportionately equal more than 110% of the required signatures, a recall election can then be called. If the sample nets fewer than 90% verified signatures, the signature gathering is deemed to have failed. The much higher and lower proportions gives more confidence against margin of error and other issues with a sample model.
Ten Day Limit Comes and Goes without Verification
On Thursday, Dupuis revealed that the ROV had successfully held to the 10 day signature verification timeline—but there was a twist. SAFE's signatures had fallen short of the 110%+ necessary to be declared sufficient and an accurate inference of number of valid signatures was not possible. Though Dupuis was cagey about the actual reason at first in the ROV statement, as well as the details of the process, this publication has obtained data that the recall sample of 5% of the total produced a proportional 102% verification, well under the necessary confidence level. Shomik Mukherjee of the East Bay Times reports a similar count from their source, which appears to be the ROV.
High Proportion of Unverified Signature Found in Sample
Though the recall group had appeared to nearly double the 73,195 signatures necessary with its 123,374 signature haul, the sample's 102% of the recall threshold means that nearly 40% of the signatures in the sample are not valid, a seemingly atypically high margin. For comparison, proponents of the Governor Gavin Newsom recall attempt in 2021 handed in 44% more signatures than required, but the hand count found that only 20% of those signatures weren't valid.
In another example, the failed attempt to recall Los Angeles DA George Gascon in 2022 yielded 27% non-valid signatures. Notably, the Gascon count also started with a sample of 5% in which 22% of signatures were found to be non-valid—but after the hand count was completed the true proportion was 5% larger. That means that the current sample findings in the ALCO recall may be also be an unreliable gauge. The high number of invalid signatures in the sample lends initial credence to anecdotal claims that gatherers chasing the escalating dollar-value of the signatures used deceptive methods to fill out their signature sheets.
Potential for Legal Contests to ROV Process
Mixing and matching the state and charter rules has led the ROV into what William Fitzgerald, the spokesperson for the pro-Price Protect the Win campaign, has called “uncharted territory”. The untenable mandates of the charter have put Dupuis in a position where he may be violating numerous charter laws, with the removal of the archaic language from the eventual certification and implementation of Measure B still months away .
The ROV’s failure to verify the count within ten days would already seemingly violate the charter, for example. But to compound the issue, the ROV applied the state rules, which now allow an additional 30 days to do a manual count and verification of the signatures. Issues are bound to arise from the fact that the charter does not seem to allow another 30 days to recount if a statistical count fails—those are state rules, not the charter’s rules, which also do not specify the sample method.
Additionally, if, after the ten day period the signatures are found to fail the required number, in the charter rules the proponents are allowed to supplement the initial submission over a ten day period–in what is obviously a passage subject to interpretation. But that’s a right that Dupuis’ decision to immediately go into a new 30 day period has seemed to deny the proponents.
Dupuis’ bespoke application of state and local laws may lead the process into the courts, Fitzgerald noted.
“The ROV are now clearly picking and choosing provisions out of convenience. This opens up many new legal questions, which have never been adjudicated in a court of law in this county,” Fitzgerald added.
Though the recall proponents issued a statement saying the group is satisfied with the 30 day timeline, SAFE, Protect the Win, or any member of the public, seem to have the predicate for lawsuits on that and various charter-related issues.
Dupuis' choices lend credence to concerns raised by Supervisors last year when contemplating the legislation that became Measure B—Supervisors acknowledged that the County was open to suits for both abiding by and seeking alternatives to the charter's recall process. Though Measure B setting the County recall rules to the state's will almost certainly pass by a high margin, the election must still be certified and a state process followed before the charter is changed, and that could span the entire counting process and beyond. The state’s rules won't likely be retroactive.
Election Results Solidify, but Lower Rungs of AD18 DCC Still in Doubt
With over tens of thousands of votes left to count, many of Alameda County’s biggest races have likely solidified. But the 18th Assembly District's Democratic Party Central Committee race, where over two dozen candidates are vying for 10 representative seats is still in flux.
18AD DCC candidates in the higher rungs of vote-winning are far enough ahead to consider to have won their place on the committee. But in the struggle for the tenth seat, only 74 votes separate Pamela Ferran and Howard Egerman. Regina Chagolla and Yoana Tchoukleva are within less than 200 votes of Ferran and Egerman, with tens of thousands of votes left to count.
Pamela Ferran 10,994
Howard Egerman 10,920
Regina Chagolla 10,765
Yoana Tchoukleva 10,743
The usual logic of running for local Democratic central committees—local networking and grassroots organizing—has been upended with the entry of atypically big money by Loren Taylor and his “Empower Oakland” slate.
Taylor raised more on the race than the next four finishers behind him combined, an extraordinary $53K—though the total of the expenditures he made won’t be known until the next campaign finance report. $30K of that amount came from two sources less than a week before the primary election—Moses Libitzky and California Real Estate Political Action Committee [CREPAC], one of California’s most active and influential real estate interest PACs. Libitzky is also an emeritus Vice President on the board of Washington Institute for Near East Policy. WINEP has been often been referred to as a front for AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group at the heart of US legislative support for Israel.
The investment is extraordinary in an election to the committee and speaks to a predominance of Democratic party politics in Northern California that requires capital-funded right-centrists like Taylor to run as Democrats. One long-time observer of the DCC noted that the committee has thus become a target of capital due to the committee's success in platforming election-winning candidates.
“DCC endorsements make or break races and it is clear wealthy business interests want to keep these endorsements centered on their portfolio,” Ryan Lalonde, former Price campaign communications consultant, noted.
Taylor may have lent his name recognition and did lend some minor funding to the other members of his “Empower Oakland Slate". Former Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf also emailed her list on behalf of Taylor, her former protege.
But only Warren Logan and Laura Leigh Geist have solid footing as of Friday's data dump. With at least one more vote count left and the differences between the lower scoring candidates in the dozens in some cases, the final numbers could look different next week.
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