99 Poll Workers Cool Heels in Recount Case : Hoffmann Granted a Delay in Hearing

After calling 99 mostly unhappy poll workers to court as witnesses, attorneys for a candidate challenging Bruce W. Sumner as the Democratic nominee in the county’s 40th Congressional District race asked Monday to delay the hearing.

The poll workers from the June 3 primary were subpoenaed by attorneys for Art Hoffmann, a follower of political extremist Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. Hoffmann, initially declared the winner in the race with Sumner, lost in a recount by 1,200 votes. Sumner gained 1,570 votes in the recount.

Hoffmann claims that the election was plagued with polling-place irregularities and ballot stuffing.

“‘When we’re treated like this, they’ll have difficulty getting poll workers ever again,” one worker said of the experience of being summoned into court.

“It’s been a tremendous inconvenience,” said another worker outside the courtroom of Superior Court Judge John C. Woolley. “I know I did my job.”

Woolley granted a delay until Wednesday morning to allow Hoffmann’s attorneys time to answer several new challenges filed by Frank P. Barbaro, Sumner’s attorney.

Woolley also made arrangements to give the poll workers two hours’ notice before they testify, a move that avoids the need for all 99 to sit and wait in the courthouse for days or weeks, while the case proceeds.

Sumner called Hoffmann’s claims “specious and unfounded.” He said Hoffmann has no indication that the poll workers can give material evidence in the case. Forcing 99 people to come to court is “an abuse of process,” Sumner declared.

Hoffmann’s lawyer, Robert R. Levy, countered that it was Sumner who first claimed the vote-counting process was tainted, when he forced a recount.

“We believe they counted accurately,” Levy said. “There must be some additional reason for Mr. Sumner’s additional 1,570 votes.”

Barbaro contended that Levy and Hoffmann are calling the 99 workers into court blindly in hopes of discovering something.

“They ran around trying to get evidence, and they couldn’t get any,” Barbaro said. “So they subpoenaed (99) people. They don’t have sufficient evidence, so they’re trying this.

“It’s harassment,” Barbaro said. “It’s ridiculous.”

Several poll workers said they considered the subpoenas a personal affront.

“He (Hoffmann) is going to do it to the bitter end,” said Jacqueline McDonald, who was paid $42 for working as a judge in a north Santa Ana precinct on June 3.

“I’ve worked the elections for a long time. This made me feel bitter,” she added.

Her husband, John J. McDonald, who worked the same polling place as an inspector and made $47, said he understands why the election workers are upset.

“They’re really bent out of shape right now because of this fiasco,” McDonald said outside the courtroom.

“They’re all upset,” McDonald said. “There’s a percentage of them who are going to say, ‘That’s it’.”

The Hoffmann legal camp asked for two more days to answer Barbaro’s claim that the U.S. Constitution requires that a challenge to the credentials of a candidate for Congress be decided by the House of Representatives. Barbaro urged Woolley to grant his challenge to the jurisdiction of a California court to hear the dispute and throw the case out.

Barbaro also claimed that the case should be dismissed because it fails to name as a defendant Registrar of Voters A.E. Olson, who would be the subject of any orders Woolley might make.