Zoning Bid Rejected in Heated Claremont Vote

A heated election in which Claremont voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposed apartment complex was thrown into near turmoil Tuesday after city officials disallowed at least 37 absentee ballots because signatures on them did not match those on voter registration records, a city official said.

The city has also received signed affidavits from 46 voters alleging that their signatures had been forged on applications for absentee ballots, City Clerk Barbara Hallamore Royalty added.

Many of the affidavits were signed Tuesday, after confused voters were told at their polling places that election records showed that they had requested absentee ballots, Royalty said. The voters who signed the affidavits were allowed to vote.

Robert Jorgensen, assistant chief of the special investigation division of the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, said his unit is looking into the matter but declined to comment on the nature of the allegations or whether the results of the investigation would affect the election’s outcome.

Unofficial results of the city’s first initiative election, which was to determine whether a vacant 20-acre lot should be rezoned to permit construction of a 340-unit apartment complex, showed the measure had been soundly defeated.

With all of the city’s 19 precincts reporting, the zoning lost 6,514 (85%) to 1,171 (15%).

The absentee ballot count, which many observers considered crucial to the outcome, was 1,287 against to 725 for the proposal.

The proposed zoning change, which was rejected last fall by both the Claremont Planning Commission and the City Council, was placed on the ballot after the developer earlier this year collected more than 6,000 signatures, far more than the required 15% of the city’s approximately 19,000 registered voters.

Since then, this quiet college town of 35,000 has been embroiled in a clamorous campaign over Measure A, intensified by an aggressive absentee ballot drive by the developer, Claremont Park Limited Partnership, and charges that the firm was trying to “buy the election” by outspending opponents $123,187 to $1,975.

In letters to local newspapers, several residents complained that door-to-door canvassers, who were paid by the developer, misrepresented the issue in visits to their homes.

However, Terry Fitzgerald, a consultant for the developer, said before the election that any misrepresentations were unintentional and that several of the canvassers had been fired.

None of the partners in the project could be reached for comment Tuesday.

By last week, Royalty had mailed out about 4,700 absentee ballots, 3,951 of them requested on applications hand-delivered to her by the developer, she said. An average of 400 absentee ballots are requested for most elections, Royalty said.

Hearing Reports

About the same time, city officials began hearing reports that some residents who had not requested absentee ballots were receiving them.

Like other voters who tried to vote on Tuesday, Robert and Emily Hurst said that they had received absentee ballots in the mail last week but thought that they had been mailed by mistake.

“I don’t like my name signed on anything I didn’t do,” said Robert Hurst after signing an affidavit that allowed him to vote at the poll. “This is really a violation.”

Local Elections Tuesday Results. Winners in bold type. Claremont BALLOT PROPOSITION 19 of 19 precincts FINAL A--Shall the ordinance changing the zoning on 20 acres between Andrew Drive and Padua Avenue from industrial to high-density residential and multiple-family residential and providing that the parcel may be developed to contain no fewer than 17 dwellings per gross acre be approved?

Vote % No 6,514 84.8 Yes 1,171 15.2

Voter turnout 39.2%